These last few weeks in the Bamu River have been good. It’s been amazing to have teams made up of short term volunteers again, the first time since the pandemic began. There are new friends and old ones that I get to work beside. Long days, but good days.
But it’s also been hard because the reality of serving in this remote setting is that you see the hard. You see the illness, injury and disability that wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) happen at home, and shouldn’t happen here either but it does because for some people there isn’t means to travel to an aid post or health centre (and sometimes treatment isn’t available there even if they can). You see a need for services that can’t be provided, or be provided frequently enough, and numbers become faces as you sit and talk to families and try to work through the best feasible options. It’s a reminder of the remote and often isolated nature of the places we serve in and the impact that has for a patient, for a person, sitting in front of you.
Writing about it is…tricky. As it always is but feels so much more these last few weeks, the good is entangled with the hard and the hard with the good, and I’m not sure it would do justice to either of them to attempt to separate them. It’s a balance I’m learning more about holding; the joy, laughter, and fun involved in what I do, as well as the hard, the tricky, and the injustice I see in what I do.
So, to describe these last few weeks I can settle on hard but good.
We treated over 800 cases of malaria
I spent a decent portion of each of my days sitting and prescribing medications for patients with malaria as there were just so. many. cases. The treatment for malaria are medications called Artemether-lumefantrine and primaquine, words that if you write them enough eventually seem like you’ve made them up.
Many of the cases we saw were children, frequently kids that we treated back in November, have already had malaria again since, and had contracted it again now. Realistically, unless something changes, we will probably treat a lot of them again when we’re back for clinic in a few month’s time. But they have treatment for this round (and a lot of people are feeling better in the river this week because of it) and it will get them another month closer to the upcoming mosquito net distribution that will hopefully help with a lot of the problem.
Sent a patrol team to the Gama River
Next to the Bamu River, about an hour and a half by boat, is the Gama River. The Bamu River is remote, but the Gama River is more remote still.
During our second week in the Bamu we planned to send a smaller medical team on patrol (staying in the villages overnight instead of returning to the ship) to the Gama River, to get health services out there as well. While discussing the trip with the local healthcare workers they didn’t know if anyone had gone on patrol in the area since we were last there, meaning there may not have been clinic in the Gama since 2019.
Because it had been so long and we didn’t know what had changed we sent a boat up river to check that the villages were actually still there (whole villages can move or relocate within a few years) and let people know we’d be coming for clinic the following week.
Over three days our patrol team saw over 200 patients. While the villages were smaller and I often thought we’d only need a half day for clinic when we started, they often swelled by mid-morning as word was sent to neighbours and everyone came across.
When looking in people’s clinic books we got to see that one other health patrol had been there since us in 2019, which was heartening in one way because someone had got there, but also hard because that was one team in early 2021 which meant for a lot of people it was a year between accessing services. Our hope is that we will be able to continue to send teams to the Gama when we are in the Bamu.
Most of the Gama patrol team (and as close to a group photo as we got)
Tested 20+ people for Tuberculosis (TB)
TB is unfortunately an epidemic in PNG and the remote nature of much of the population affects access to testing and treatment. Without timely access to testing and treatment not only does the disease spread, but many people die. Having a lab on our ship means we can test for TB and provide results often the same or the following day, so that they can receive their results and be connected with treatment quickly if they are positive.
Each time we go back to an area we also try to follow up with patients that we have previously tested, although they can be a little difficult to track down. This time we were able to discover that someone who we tested in 2019 had received treatment, was currently healthy, recently married and had moved to a neighbouring village.
Delivered a baby on the ship
This isn’t something we usually do, and the little baby girl that entered the world with us the first Tuesday of outreach was actually the first baby to be born on our ship! The mumma had pulled up to our ship in a dinghy and wasn’t in great condition having been in labour for a number of days. A few of our team members spent the morning helping get the little bub delivered safely and were able to give mum and baby the antibiotics they needed before they were transported to the nearest health centre.
One of our teams was in the family’s village a few days later and were able to see that mum and bub were doing well!
While the wave of malaria patients was the dominating focus of a lot of clinic, we also gave over 1,800 routine childhood vaccinations, 150 women family planning services, had general outpatient consultations, provided antenatal check-ups as well as COVID vaccines and testing.
Hard but good. Full days but good days.
And mud. So much mud
What’s next?
We’re currently back in Port Moresby to restock and next week will be joined by another bunch of volunteers who will head back out with us for another six weeks of clinic in Western Province.
PS: If you have any questions about what I’m up to or what I have been up to please reach out – I’d love to chat with you! If you would like to consider donating to help support me financially in the work I do here please check out this link for more details.