A working holiday

Kola Nut


Doctors Joel Dickens and Andy Norman


The Gambaga Escarpment


A Female Pet Baboon

Last weekend, I visited the Gambaga Escarpment at Nakpanduri and stayed at the well respected Nalerigu Baptist Hospital. At the hospital, the doctors presented a young man who had a kola nut wedged into his throat for eight days and for which they did not have the equipment to remove it. Examination of the patient revealed air in his neck indicating that the kola nut had perforated through the esophagus. His history revealed that because his girlfriend had left him, he sought the advice of a traditional medicine healer who advised him to swallow the biggest kola nut he could find. This, the young man was told, would result in bringing his girlfriend back. The patient was transferred to Tamale Teaching Hospital where the nut was removed endoscopically and a neck drain and nasogastric tube were inserted. He is doing well several days after surgery.
For the past three weeks, Dr. Andy Norman of Vanderbilt University has been in Ghana performing vesicovaginal fistula repair on several women who developed complications from giving birth. If a woman has prolonged labor, the baby’s head can constantly pound on the urinary bladder and this may cause a permanent, open tract between the vagina and urinary bladder. When this occurs, urine leaks continuously out of the patient’s vagina causing the woman to stink of urine and to be ostracized from her family and village. The complication is rare in the developed countries where obstetrical care is available during labor but here, there are far too many women who are not as fortunate.