Starting in the South

Our first stop in Togo has been in the Southern part of the country where we came initially in 2004. This hospital was started 30 years ago and has established a good reputation based on the wide variety of patients cared for in a wide catchment area.  The people and facility seem timeless - virtually unchanged from how I recall them over a decade ago.

We’ll be here of most of February and this is a great place to start our stay in Togo because we are among old friends, it gives us all a chance to adjust to the temperature change (not near as hot as it will be in the North) and allows me to get a refresher course on what general surgery means on this continent. 

There is a relatively big surgery team here currently -  a full time general surgeon, a professor of trauma surgery from New York who serves 6 months each year here, a pediatric surgeon and third year general surgery resident from Cleveland here for a month and a gastroenterologist who has cut back to a 3/4 position in the US so he can work hear each year. So, I have plenty of back up when I am not sure how to handle things like machete hacks to the hand, redo C-sections and neglected tooth abscesses that turn into life threatening face/neck abscesses. Thankfully there is plenty of what I do back home too. When we move to the new hospital opening next month in the North, the surgery team will be much smaller.

I’ll include a cute picture again. This girl was hit by a car and suffered a femur fracture. She became popular because she looks like the person in traction in a well used surgery text here called Primary Surgery. She sat in this position in a crude traction apparatus (sand bag) for 6 weeks! Her X-ray shows callus formation of a healing fracture. The overlap is okay because her growth plate remains open and with time the fractured leg will lengthen. I snapped a picture the day the traction came off and she was cleared to return to her home. I liked her little  baby doll and showed her a photo of my daughter with a similar matching doll which made her flash her big smile.