It’s 43° outside but malnourished children still manage to get hypothermic. Often it reflects severe infection with low blood sugar, which needs to be treated by covering the children in space blankets and piling them on top of each other in a small warm room as seen here. I guess we don’t tend to see this in Europe, where shared body heat is a resource that only James Bond tends to employ.
Remarkably they (usually) pull through and start sitting up, and then putting on weight, and then running around….and then they go home. But for every 10 children who progress from intensive care to the open ward, 10 more arrive in an equally fragile state. When one is tired, the task can seem Sisyphean. It’s at these moments that I relieve my tension by chasing the cats out of the intensive care unit.
Unfortunately cats seem to adore the unit, and particularly the warm room. One day I realised that the staff hide in the warm room to eat their breakfast, which explains the lingering aroma of food (and may also explain the cats’ attraction to the room). Sadly, prohibiting this practice does not seem to have made a difference. I have tried everything to get rid of the cats – locking the doors, setting up a committee of hygiene, unleashing the health educator on the mothers….but the irresistible charms of the warm room always lure them back. Unfortunately they have a frustrating habit of jumping from bed to bed, from one puddle of diarrhoea to another, which belittles the introduction of sinks and detergent bottles which we were so proud of at first.
So…it was with some surprise today that I realised that there was not a single cat in the feeding centre. It took me some time to find the explanation. An enterprising nurse who had previously worked in the national hospital remembered that there was a similar structure at the hospital, near a kitchen which produces an aroma of food that extends to a radius of 50 metres. Apparently our cats have taken to their new home with no regrets.
I guess this means it will be breakfast in the warm room as usual tomorrow.
Nod will particularly enjoy this one. G
Sounds like an incredibly difficult environment!