The story of Deborah...

Deborah was brought to Amecet on 2/9/'22. She was brought by her uncle and a staff of a healthcare centre in the village. Again a sad story, Deborah's mother is HIV+ and she has a mental problem. Nobody knows who is the father of Deborah. The uncle, (he is a cousin of her mother) tries to care for the mother and also for Deborah. Deborah is 15 months old, she can't walk, not even stand by her self. She is malnourished (her weight is 6.2 kg.) she is weak and she is aneamic. She is a sad little girl, very quiet, she doesn't cry and she doesn't laugh... she is just there.....  It took a lot of work to get a smile from her, she is really a child that touches your heart.

She was sick when she came, fever and no appetite. We took her to the doctor for check up, she had malaria and an infection, so she went on treatment. After the treatment, we tested her again, still malaria, again (another) treatment and also again antibiotic for an  urine tract infection. After that she was still not fine, we took her back to the doctor and he asked us to go and make a X-ray of the chest, maybe the fever, the lack of appetite and the weakness, could point to primary TB. We went to a centre which makes X-rays and after the X-ray, I was called, the X-ray didn't look good at all and the heart was also enlarged, the doctor there, suggested that we should make also an echo of the heart. He called our doctor and we all agreed that we should also make a heart scan. 

The doctor saw two small holes in the heart and we got the findings and went back to our first doctor. He is a pediatrician, and he looked very closely to the scan and the X-ray, listened again to the chest of Deborah, called some other colleagues in and together they agreed that Deborah needs to be treated for primary TB. I got a referral to the TB unit and we went for the medicines. We started her the next morning on the anti TB medicines, she will have to take them daily for 6 months... 

We had decided to give Deborah a NG tube, because she refused to drink, now we feed her every three hours by the tube. we start with the cup, when she refuses, we give by the tube. Even in the night, the night duty staff, continues to give her milk by the tube.