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From Madagascar, we received the following moving and impressive report from our local partner, Tanja Hock of the NGO ‘Mobile-Hilfe-Madagaskar e.V.’:
Jeannette is 27 years old and lives in a village near Beroroa in Madagascar. We met her at the small Beroroa health centre, which is staffed by a midwife and a nurse. It takes eight hours to reach the nearest hospital in a good four-wheel-drive vehicle.
Jeannette recently gave birth to her twelfth child; her previous child is just one year old. Of the twelve children she has given birth to, seven are still alive. Jeannette went to the clinic 48 hours after giving birth because the placenta had not yet been delivered. The midwife discovered that the placenta had become attached to the uterus and that she therefore needed an operation. This is not possible in Beroroa, as they do not even have a doctor. So an emergency call was made to the capital, Antananarivo, to our Madagascan team of doctors, who volunteer to help people in need out in the bush.
Thanks to Tulisa, we were able to pay for the flight in a mission helicopter and took off very early the next morning.
By land, it would have taken us three to four days one way just to reach the city. That would have been too late to save the woman’s life. We operated on the woman out in the bush; the diagnosis had been confirmed. Fortunately, we were able to remove the woman’s uterus, along with the placenta still contained within it. The entire uterus was already infected and the placenta had begun to decay. The stench was appalling; flies swarmed into the operating theatre as the uterus was removed from her abdomen.
We provided all the drips, medication and dressings required for the woman’s ongoing care. Jeannette remained in the infirmary, where the midwife and the nurse looked after her for two weeks. Then all the stitches were removed and the woman was discharged home. After another week, Jeannette returned to the infirmary for a check-up and was even able to breastfeed again. This hadn’t been possible before because she had been so seriously ill.
We were able to save this woman’s life, and this was made possible by a wonderful collaboration between the Madagascan volunteer doctors, us as an international NGO in Madagascar, and Tulisa in Germany! A very big thank you to all our donors!
Until next time,
From Madagascar, Tanja Hock