Evangel Hospital
I hope you came here last,
so that you'll realize that "intensive care" is a relative term. Don't
compare it with what you're used to in your developed home country. What we do
have is more intensive nursing care, as we try to keep at least a 1:3 ratio of nurses to
patients in the six-bed unit.
There are two adults, a child, and twin-premature babies are here now. The woman is being treated for severe eclampsia (hypertension and seizures in late pregnancy). The man is recovering from surgery for a bowel perforation caused by typhoid.
Like the rest of the hospital, the ICU is not big on technology and equipment. We do have some very useful items though, things not found in most hospitals here. An IV infusion pump, a pulse oximiter, an ECG machine, and perhaps most wonderful of all, an oxygen concentrator. That machine extracts oxygen from the air and concentrates it to nearly pure oxygen, so we don't have to rely on the supply of compressed oxygen in tanks. There is even an old adult respirator, about the size of a big washing machine. It still works though it's rarely used.
The sink is in one corner. It's not too convenient for hand-washing, since there is
usually no running water. Instead we use a bucket of clean water. Above the sink is a
small medicine cupboard with a small stock of antibiotics, chloroquine, digoxin, dopamine, glucose,
furosemide, and other basic drugs.