Adult ICU
 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.
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