Partners In Health Ebola Response

Above: The newborns rest at Partners In Health-supported J.J. Dossen Hospital in Liberia earlier this month.

Thank you for continuing to support Partners In Health and our work in Sierra Leone and Liberia to rebuild Ebola-ravaged health systems. You may have read exciting news about Ebola recently: scientists report having developed a highly effective and fast-acting vaccine against the disease, capable of halting and preventing outbreaks like the one that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa in 2014.

Nonetheless, the legacy of the 2014 outbreak remains, and PIH's presence in Sierra Leone and Liberia is as critical as ever. Below is a recent report from J.J. Dossen Hospital in Liberia about the healthy birth of triplets, made possible with PIH's support.

"On a hot and humid Monday in early December, 28-year-old Elizabeth climbed the handful of stairs to her neighborhood health center in southern Liberia and nurses in the admitting area could tell, immediately, that this was no ordinary pregnancy. The petite woman’s belly was really big. Maybe she was carrying twins? Or maybe a disease such as hepatitis had enlarged her liver? Neither, it turned out. An ultrasound at J.J. Dossen, a PIH-supported hospital down the road, revealed that Sieh was 33 weeks pregnant with triplets.

Thanks to great strides made over the past year, the staff at J.J. Dossen helped Elizabeth deliver in much the same way as in the U.S., albeit with a little extra preparation and no battalion of experts on call. 

While Elizabeth rested for four days, arrangements were made. An engineer hooked up the autoclave that sterilizes large batches of surgical instruments. The operations team bought gas for the newly installed generator, which was needed to run, among other things, the operating room’s air conditioner. (It wasn’t unheard of for a surgeon to suffer heat exhaustion in the 90-degree heat and leave the operating room in the middle of surgery to cool down.) The procurement team found appropriate sutures in the capital, and a charity group flew them to the hospital for free. Both of the adjoining operating rooms in the newly refurbished ward were prepped and 14 staff were enlisted—anesthesiologists, doctors, nurses, and three two-person teams, who would try to resuscitate the babies, if necessary.

On December 22, a smiling Sieh and her healthy little boys—named Ben, George, and Doboh, after clinicians in the delivery room—were discharged. PIH staff drove them home, stopping along the way at Sieh's neighborhood health center, where the midwifery staff got to see her, a belly lighter and three sons richer, and schedule follow-up visits."

Please feel free to read the full story here: http://www.pih.org/blog/triplets-born-at-j.j.-dossen-hospital-in-liberia

Thank you as always for your generous support!