I'm sure I've mentioned in other posts that beyond my regular duties I do what I can to be involved in medical development projects. Two weeks ago I went with a team to a remote area high in the mountains to visit hospitals and clinics. We taught -- this is the big difference from past projects -- we taught doctors, mid-wives, nurses, lab techs. We taught about delivering babies, taking care of infants, diagnosing malaria and hepatitis, treatment of skin diseases and all kinds of things. It was a fascinating week. We got a lot of great things done. We learned a lot -- already we've adjusted our plan and will have our first centralized teaching progams starting soon -- as opposed to us bouncing around on the roughest roads I've seen for 5-8 hours every day and travelling all over the staff will come to us in a central location. And we had a great time! This first picture is a picture of me standing at Bandemeir lake -- it's a lot like Havasupai actually. Crystal clear blue water that you can see down about 20 feet. Limestone walls and travertine pools -- the whole lake is actually a travertine pool. This place will someday be a great travel destination for tourists if sercurity persists. For now there were a couple of tents nearby providing meals....one was even labeled as a hotel! Lots of day visitors were enjoying the sights. We were just passing through and stopped to take a look.
Now, down below are all pictures taken in the largest hospital in the Bamian Province -- the provincial hospital of course. While it is crowded, the facility needs much improvement, the results produced are not what they can be -- this is a huge improvement over what existed here just a few short years ago. The first hosptial photo is the post-partum ward. Six beds and cramped. Mothers and babies in the beds together. The second hospital photo is the operation room -- actually that's the room in the far back where you can see the actual table. The third hospital photo I took of the labor and delivery stats hanging on the wall in the hallway. You'll note the high number of deaths with delivery every month -- this is something we can directly work on. And consider this -- deaths with birth at home are much higher. At least now there's a hospital that does deliveries and they even have a female OB/GYN. Deliveries at a hospital have a much better chance than at home here. The roughest stat in Afghanistan has to be the combined risk of death to the mother at delivery and the phenomenal birthrate of 6.8 children per woman here. This gives every woman a 33% chance of death over the course of their lifetime. There's lots of work to be done.
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