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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Poverty hinders medical treatment.


The poverty of our patients and the lack of the hospital’s ability to provide necessary drugs and supplies without the patients first paying for these things are big factors in providing treatment. Because the sick and their families cannot afford medical care, they delay in coming to the hospital. Due to presenting at such a late stage in their illness, half of those admitted die within twenty-four hours. In rural Africa, many pregnant women deliver at home, often with complications. Two-thirds of children die at home without ever coming to the hospital.
Recently, one elderly woman developed a dental infection, which spread to her neck and eventually drained out from her neck. Fortunately, she did not die while she treated herself for six months at home and finally came in when she could not swallow any food.
Another patient with a fractured mandible, whom we needed to refer to another hospital, could not pay for the eight-dollar bus ticket until we gave him money for transportation.
Skin grafts were done on a woman who could not afford a plastic surgeon and would otherwise have gone home with an exposed wound.
Our ear, nose and throat department submitted a paper on malaria being a cause of deafness in northern Ghana.

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