Baby, baby, baby oooh!

Welcome to TTL's Safehome!

Saturday was the 9^th birthday of Touching Tiny Lives, and it also marked my first visit to the safehome.  Words cannot describe my excitement to get to hold such adorable little children!  When you first walk into the safehome from the volunteer sleeping quarters, you enter a playroom scattered with toys, bom’e (boh-may…the Basotho women who take care of the children), and babies galore!  Most of the children are under the age of 2, so at any moment in the safehome there’s a good mixture of sleeping babies, crying babies, and crawling babies.

T during his time in the TTL safehome.
His hair finally grew in by the time I saw him!

The first child I met in the safehome was little T (I won’t use any names because of TTL’s Child Protection Policy), a boy less than two years old and quite possibly the cutest child I have ever seen.  I was a bit surprised when T came right up to me to play considering there are rumors that some babies are afraid of newcomers, especially ones with pale skin.  Within a matter of minutes T and I were best buds; I fell in love with him (don’t tell my boyfriend!) and contemplated stealing him to bring home with me.  He just had so much energy, a big smile, and a little chuckle that lit up the room.  The second day I entered the safe home T crawled to me faster than I’ve seen any child move, grabbed my hands, and leaned his head back…our signal from the day before to lift him over my head like an airplane.  I couldn’t believe he remembered!  I also thought it was very funny how little T liked to rub my hair between his fingers as if feeling something new for the first time (it was cute until he started pulling on it!).  I decided to read up a bit on T in order to learn what he was like when he entered the safehome.  I found some of T’s story in a TTL blog post written by a med school volunteer who stayed here in March.  Her description of him as a limp, skinny, almost lifeless child shocked me.  This was definitely not the T I was hanging out with now!  I guess it just goes to show the amazing things that can be done for malnourished children with the proper care and feeding habits here at TTL!  T went home to his family this past Monday…I was very sad to see him go (a selfish feeling, I know).  The staff say he was very happy to see his grandparents again when they dropped him off out in the villages, and I’m hoping to see him still happy and healthy when we stop by his new home on outreach in the coming weeks.

There is another little boy in the safehome who is actually a bit of an anomaly for TTL.  As I mentioned in other posts, TTL’s target population is children under 5 years old.  This boy, I will call him “M,” has a sweet smile, is a skinny little thing, and is 8 years old.  He also walks with a limp because he has the worst scoliosis (crooked spine) I have ever seen.  M’s condition is still a bit unclear because his Bukana (the small booklet every person in Lesotho has filled with medical records) is missing details from several years of his life.  According to M’s grandmother, he was born a healthy child and his spine didn’t become contorted until recently.  This led the physicians here to believe that M had a serious case of spinal tuberculosis. 

Tuberculosis (TB) is a bacterium spread through aerosols, aka the droplets released from coughing, sneezing, talking, and laughing.  The majority of people infected with TB (95%) never actually show symptoms because their body is able to “wall” it off.  Since TB is generally a pulmonary disease, those who do show clinical signs of disease have a consistent cough that draws up sputum from the lungs. Tuberculosis is highly prevalent in Lesotho, with approximately 696 per 100,000 persons infected with the bacteria.  This makes Lesotho the country with the 3^rd highest prevalence rate in the world.  Because HIV lowers immune system functioning by attacking white blood cells, TB and HIV co-infection is also very prevalent in developing countries and is a major public health concern here (64% of TB cases are estimated to be co-infected with HIV in Lesotho).

TB educational sticker I found on a motorcycle in Mokhotlong.

The good news is that TB is treatable.  The bad news…the treatment is a pill a day for 6-9 months and missing one dose can destroy any immunity your body has developed.  The even worse news…as people have missed doses over time, certain strains of the bacteria have become resistant to the antibiotics we do have available.  This is called Multi-drug Resistant Tuberculosis, or MDR-TB.  Furthermore, if left untreated because of missed doses or lack of access to the full treatment regimen, TB can spread to the bones, brain, liver, kidneys, and heart.  Extrapulmonary TB, also called Pott's disease, can be fatal.  Since M’s family did not have access to the proper treatment for his TB, and in fact may not have known he was infected, M is now left with the aftermath of a serious case of spinal TB.  Luckily, TTL has access to the proper antibiotic regimen for M so he has been receiving treatment since he first arrived here.  Unfortunately, though, multiple surgeries are be needed to fix his scoliosis, along with much fundraising and logistics planning before this even becomes an option for M.  I really hope we can do something to help him in the near future, I need my little buddy to keep teaching me Sesotho words!

The body of the malnourished twin girl.  Heartbreaking.

On another note, the birthday of TTL was met with 3 new (very malnourished) arrivals to the safehome.  One is a four-month old girl, weighing just about 6.6 lbs.  She is an orphan in the care of family members who say she lost a lot of weight due to several bouts of serious diarrhea.  In the developing world, diarrheal disease is the leading cause of death among children due to dehydration.  The other two arrivals were six-week old twins, a boy and a girl, who were the most emaciated babies I’ve ever seen.  The baby boy weighed 2.8kg and the baby girl weighed 2.2kg, that’s about 6 lbs and just less than 5 lbs respectively.  The mother of these twins wasn’t producing enough milk for both of them and didn’t have access to formula, so she was mixed feeding them with porridge.  Since babies that young cannot digest porridge properly, these two twins were not receiving any of its nutritional benefits.  When I held both of them for the first time, they were swaddled in huge blankets for warmth.  I’m pretty sure the blankets weighed more than they did.  The boy took to bottle-feeding pretty quickly and is doing well so far.  The girl, however, did not.  On Monday I helped the TTL fellow, Jenn, put a nasal feeding tube in the baby girl.  She could barely exclaim her discomfort with it; she hardly has enough energy to let out more than a soft whimper.  When you pinch her skin it also stays dented, a sure sign of dehydration.  Jenn has been giving her oral rehydration salts (ORS – a mix of water and salts usually used to rehydrate children with serious diarrheal attacks) through the feeding tube each day in order to fix this problem.  Our little twin girl has been struggling more than we’d hoped, but the TTL staff is doing everything they can to make sure she survives this tough start to life.

Holding the twin girl just after her arrival to the safehome.

Barely opening her eyes.

Putting in the feeding tube.  Look how tiny her body is
compared to my hand!

Tiny, tiny fingers.  Her wrist is smaller than the width of two adult fingers.

There are so many adorable children in the safehome…I could probably talk about them all day!  There’s a six-month-old baby girl who's growth is so stunted I thought she was a newborn.  There are two little boys on antiretroviral therapy because they are HIV positive.  But then there are also the children who look healthier than ever thanks to proper medicines and nutrition offered by TTL.  My overwhelming feeling of sadness when I see the new arrivals and the sickest children is soon met by a feeling of encouragement when I see kids like T headed back to their families, happy and healthy.  When I go in to help out at dinner everyday, I am excited to take part in improving the health and nutrition of each child here.  I can’t wait to watch them grow and learn over the next 5 weeks…the safehome really is a magical place!

Don't you love me?!
(His nickname is Makoena because his cheeks look filled with fat cakes!)

Just chillin'