The arrival of Christine 2....

This morning a lady came to our door, carrying a child on her back. She came to sit on our veranda and we saw that she was carrying a seven year old girl, who was very, very malnourished. We greeted her and then she started to share. At first it was a bit a strange story, but at the end she changed her statements and we think we got the real story. The lady was a bit tough with the little girl and we all felt for the child. We found out that she was admitted in the hospital, she also had a canula in her foot. In her medical book we saw different things written, so we decided that we would go back with them to the hospital to see how we could best help. We went to the HIV clinic and there we got some answers. They were admitted in the paedriatic ward, but waiting to go to the feeding centre, where was no place at present. They were also send for an X-ray to rule out TB and they were on counselling for starting ARVs. After talking with the doctor and the nurses, they all agreed that Amecet would be a good place for her and we took her for X-ray. There is no TB, so we could take her to Amecet and promised to do some extra blood tests and a CD4 test and then we will come back next week for the start of the ARV medicins.

We weighed her and she is 11,5 kgs. She is 7 years! She should weigh at least 25 kgs! When we took her to the shower to bath her, I really had to swallow, so skinny, so sad and she looked at us with those big sad eyes. We had asked her if she wanted to stay with us for a little while and she said yes, but now she was a bit scared. We put her a nice dress on and she asked for milk! That is good, she likes to eat and drink milk! But the bloodtest showed malaria, so we will treat her for that and she has a lot of diarrhea. Her name is Christine, since we have already a Christine, this will be Christine 2! She still has a long way to go, but she is able to smile, and when there is a smile..... there is hope!!!