Jiggers...

It was almost 6 o'clock in the evening, yesterday, when the Police brought two children to Amecet. The Police was called to a family. at first it looks like child neglecting, there were four children and the place was very dirty, all the children had wounds from the jiggers. but then they met the mother, who was lame and she couldn't really help her children. The Police decided to take the two smallest children, to bring for treatment to Amecet and they will see what to do with the rest of the family! Their home needs to be cleaned and sprayed.

Janneke and Simon were still there when they came, so they first put them with their feet in a bucket with water and anti septic in it. The oldest child is a girl, Rosa, she is around 7 years old and her brother is Moses, he might be 5 years old.

Moses' hands are also invested with jiggers. That are small larva's, which are often in area's where pigs are, but also because of poor hygiene, people have jiggers. They come in your skin, often the feet, but also the hands can be with jiggers, or the buttocks, when little children sit on the ground.

His feet were worse, it must be very painful to walk, It looks like the jiggers just eat his skin away.

Simon started yesterday evening already with opening the wounds and cleaning, then Janneke packed them with bethadine and after a meal, they slept....

This morning the job continued. Emmanuel started to opening and clean the feet and hands of them.

They were very brave, if you see the foot of Moses, you know that this boy suffered and still suffers. He had the worse wounds. It took a long time to treat all the spots and then we packed them again in Bethadine and we found nice socks to cover it all.

They were very okay with it!! They were running around on their socks, playing and they loved the swings and the meals!!!

We are struggling with little Julius. He came in Amecet on 15 January in Amecet, by then he was one week old. His mother died after giving birth. He was small, a bit malnourished, weighing only 1.9 kg. After 3 days, he started to get problems, some diarrhea and breathing problems, we have been at the doctors with him every day, for the past 3 days. On and off on IV drip, we feed him by NG tube. There are still breathing problems. When you see him on this picture with Eline, one of our short term volunteers, you can see he is very sick. Please join us in prayers for him.