After a month-long deployment with Red Cross in Mozambique, a family nurse practitioner living and working in the Chilcotin returned home in May filled with admiration for the resiliency of the people living with the aftermath of Cyclone Idai.
“There was never any shortage of smiles and positivity,” said Patrice Gordon, who was the medical co-ordinator for the mission.
“It’s so heartwarming to work in that environment where you walk out with a feeling of ‘we’ve got such a big job ahead of us and they have so much on their plates’ and are greeted by people who are not feeling sorry for themselves, but instead are eager to determine what they can do to make it better.”
Gordon is no stranger to providing medical aid with Canadian Red Cross.
She went to Africa in 2018 with the Ebola crisis, Bangladesh in 2017 to work at a refugee camp, Nepal after an earthquake in 2015, and Sierra Leone in 2014 for another Ebola crisis.
Read more: Chilcotin nurse practitioner heading to Africa’s Ebola crisis
“It was a really good mission,” Gordon said.
“When we got there we set objectives with the Ministry of Health in Mozambique and the local hospital staff for the time period we were going to be there and we were able to accomplish our goals.”
The situation in Mozambique was unusual for the Red Cross team, she added.
Normally their field hospital is a free-standing and independent entity, but this time around, the Nhamatanda Hospital where they were stationed was partially demolished due to damage caused by the cyclone.
“We were kind of embedded into the hospital and were working so closely with their existing doctors and nurses, so it was a great opportunity for us to learn from them and them to learn from us.”
Gordon’s team set up a cholera treatment unit because there was a cholera outbreak because of flooding.
Inside the tent they administered vaccines and outside helped with cleaning up the drinking water through testing and purification.
“With all the organizations, including us, that were helping out, we were able to get the number of cholera cases down. Giving people access to safe drinking water was a big win. It cut cholera off at the knees.”
There was also a surge in malaria cases as well, due to all the standing water after the flooding.
“The government of Mozambique was on it and saw it coming so they had spraying campaigns and did a lot of education around the most vulnerable people to contract malaria and the World Health Organization was active in giving out mosquito nets.”
Many of the malaria cases were complicated, Gordon added.
“In those countries they are used to seeing it all the time, it’s part of their reality and generally people are treated with pills. They go home and take them and they are fine, but we were seeing a number of cases with people having seizures and not responding to the medication.”
There were deaths from malaria, and often the victims were children because they had not had time to build up an immune response.
The Red Cross malaria centre had 21 beds and most of them were occupied by children when Gordon was there.
There were over 22,000 confirmed cases of malaria and more than half of the cases reported after the cyclone were in Nhamatanda district.
“We only kept the people that had the complex cases in our treatment centre.”
It was difficult seeing the high infant and maternal mortality, but Gordon said she thought they were able to make an impact by working with the staff on antenatal care.
“We showed them things to watch for to prevent some of the maternal mortality and some interventions that can happen right after birth to prevent the neonatal mortality.”
Gordon normally feels guilty about leaving her Red Cross posts and going home to her life in paradise at Horn Lake, she added.
“I will keep in touch with them and some of the doctors I got to know to see how it is going, but I also know they will be able to move forward more effectively to do their job because we were there.”
To date Red Cross has sent 39 people to support relief operations, confirmed Aldis Brennan, media relations advisor with Canadian Red Cross.
More than 36,000 people have received emergency relief, and more than 18,800 people have received water, sanitation, hygiene and health services from the Red Cross with 900,000 litres of water distributed and 42 latrines constructed.
According to World Vision, Idai was the strongest cyclone on record in the Southern Hemisphere and the United Nations children’s agency estimated that 1.5 million children were affected.
Read more: Canadian Red Cross appeal for Mozambique an opportunity for locals to pay it forward
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