Island Hospital, Monrovia

Once again my Kiwi OR nurse friend on the Mercy Ship asked me if I would like to go to Island Hospital run my Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF) in Monrovia. The doctors there had requested the help of our general surgeon on board, Dr Bruce Steffes from the States. They had a young boy of seven who had come to the hospital several days before we got there with a skin infection on his back between the shoulder blades. This infection had spread very fast down his back just above the buttocks. The general surgeon had dealt with many cases of Necrotising Facitis (flesh eating disease) before and did quite an extensive dissection with cautery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovie) and a scalpel to get rid of the dead flesh. One cool trick of the cautery knife or tool is it's ablity to seal blood vessels. A number of times when he was cutting with the scalpel, small blood vessels would be severed. He would ask for a small clamp and hold the vessel closed. Then he would touch the clamp with the cauterizer. This would fuse the vessel closed.

The child went to the intensive care unit after the surgery which took about an hour and a half. We have heard back from the hospital that the boy is doing well and will survive this terrible ordeal. We will return for a visit on Thursday the 20th March to review his wound and perhaps book him for surgery on the ship at a later date. Due to the nature of the infection a lot of flesh needed to be removed so the surgeons on board will have to do some skin grafting to cover the defect.

Written by Dan courtesy of Kylie

That's me on the right - notice perspiration at waist height - it was hot in there!