Scenes From An Iraki Childhood April 12th 2008
One of the children wounded in the American airstrikes on Sadr City yesterday night:
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Question for Maryam or others:
Is this child on a ventilator?
Dairymaid:
I asked Um Thalit - she said yes.
Ali
Thank you Ali.
I thought as much, but it looks very different than those to which I am accustomed. Of course, I wondered then about the electricity, and the head injury,and what would happen with such serious injuries to require mechanical ventilation and this beauty’s mom…. and am just overwhelmed and infuriated by the whole thing.
Wishing you all safety, and much much more.
Dairymaid:
The problem we face treating any traumatic injury isn’t stabilising the patient. We are very expert in that now - hard won and we rather not have had the chance to learn it. But the fact is that the immediate care given is in some ways the least important. No matter how severely wounded the patient they will get at most two hours in theatre. The problem is what happens after we send them home often the same day that they’ve been operated on, or the day after. They die of complications typically infections, entirely preventable in normal circumstance but their wounds are washed in water that often contains faecal organisms and no antibiotics to treat the infections.
The respirator you can see is very old - when the electric power goes the respirator stops, sometimes the patient lives most often they don’t.
That is the brutal reality with which we now live.
Maryam