We have been busy getting our Bugnay extension clinic up and running since January this year. Finally in June, all of the Bugnay staff moved up to the centre and began setting up, finishing decorating and organizing and visiting patients!
The Bugnay clinic staff on their way to visit mothers in a neighbouring village.
Since we opened our doors again in June, we have performed hundreds of Primary Healthy Care check-ups, hiked into 4 different villages bringing prenatal care, and done dozens of emergency hospital transports.
Here is a story about a particularly harrowing transport.
Tribal War! – by Aisling Lynch (Irish missionary midwife currently serving in Bugnay)
“We had just finished up our prenatal day and were tidying up the clinic when we heard that tribal war was declared that afternoon between 2 nearby villages. Less than 30 minutes later an ambulance from the nearby Rural Health Unit (RHU) stops outside the clinic and an armed policeman jumps out calling for help. Inside the ambulance was a midwife friend of ours who works at the RHU. There was a young man in the ambulance who had been shot in the head and was going into shock. Their oxygen tank was broken so we swapped it with ours and as our friend was on her own, I got into the ambulance to help her.
The journey to the hospital takes about an hour and it is a very narrow, windy road through the mountains. Myself and the other midwife took turns keeping pressure on the head wound while keeping the young man’s head stable, all the while checking his pulse and blood pressure. There were no seatbelts in the ambulance so it was no easy task to do this for an hour while being thrown around the back of the ambulance every few minutes. A few times on the journey we could not find his pulse but then he opened his eyes just as we were starting CPR. I have never been so relieved as we passed that final bend in the road and saw the hospital in front of us. It was surreal to start our handover to the hospital staff with “Gunshot wound to the head” all the while with 2 fully armed police officers keeping watch.
The young man was stabilized at the local hospital but as they were not equipped for this kind of injury, he was then transferred 6 hours away to another hospital. The last I heard, he survived his injury and is undergoing treatment for a brain injury.
The journey back to the clinic was just as scary but for different reasons. The lights in the ambulance weren’t working well and then is started raining. Guess what else wasn’t working well? That’s right, the windshield wipers! The driver had to drive with his head out the window so that he could see where we were going. Fair play to the driver though, we made it safely back to the clinic!”
We are so excited to have our “Waiting Home” open for mothers hiking from far flung villages to deliver with us. Although we have not had our official “Grand Opening” we have delivered 4 babies so far!
“Itess” and her new baby girl!
We are hoping to combine the “Grand Opening” with our Christmas party so we will hope that the Dept. of Health will expedite our applications!
I will also try to post more regularly!
