The Hospital of Hope

Today I am going to talk a little bit about the hospital itself, but first a little background. There is another hospital in the southern part of the country and it has been there since the 70’s. It was founded by ABWE a Christian organization who wanted to reach the people in Togo. They were approached several years ago by the government about building a hospital in Mango (pronounced Mon-go). Since Togo is primarily Muslim ABWE told the government it would be a Christian hospital and they would be talking about the bible there. The government said it was okay because Christians took better care of their patients. So the plan was set and the wheels begun turning on how they were going to build a hospital almost 8 hours away in the city of Mango. It took many years for the hospital to be built but once it was finished it has now seen over 9000 patients in 6 months. I learned many of the Togolese people who helped built the hospital were then trained and hired on to work on staff at the hospital. Since these people helped build the hospital and watched it come together they in turn take great care of the hospital itself.

A typical morning at the Hospital of Hope goes something like this-

Allan Niells is the director of HOH and does triage with over 400 people every morning! Allan has lived in Togo for seven years with his family and is fluent in French one of the main languages here in Togo. Unfortunately French is not the only language spoke in Mango, there are 10 different tribal languages and sometimes it is hard to find the right person to speak the language you need. All children, pregnant women, and those with obvious wounds and illness are immediately sent to clinic. Allan then has to weed out all the people or give them rendezvous to come back at a later time. Triage is “complaint based” and there are no vital signs taken until they get to clinic. Once they get to clinic they are sent to get their vitals taken and to then wait for a doctor or PA to see them. Sometimes patients wait all day to be seen because of the amount of people allowed to go to clinic that day. Clinic usually sees about 100 patients per day, which is divided up by I believe 5 doctors and PAs. Once assessed by the medical team they will either be admitted or scheduled to come back to do follow up clinic appointments. Once they are admitted they come to Rea (the ED) and then either observed for worsening conditions or admitted into a bed. I haven't quite been able to get pictures on the inside because we don't want the patients thinking we are making a spectacle of them by taking pictures. 

(sorry for it being so far away but this is the front of the clinic)

(This is the security shack that patients are triaged at) 

The hospital is then divided up into 10 sections: men’s general, isolation, and ICU, women’s general, isolation, and ICU, general peds, PICU, NICU, and maternity. There are usually four to five nurses on per shift to take care of all these patients. Many patients stay for a couple of days or up to 2-3 weeks before they can go home. Many of these people are sacrificing a lot to stay in the hospital because of how much it costs. As you could imagine the people of Togo are extremely poor and a hospital could be many months of salary for a family. One thing the hospital does that I found to extremely cool is they will accept goats, sheep, and cow as payment if the family does not have any more money. They have around 12-15 animals, which have been received for payment, and in turn will be sold to benefit the hospital. Since the family members have to provide care and food for their loved ones the hospital has provided them a place to stay on the compound. It is called cuisine and it is just a tall building with an open area where they can sleep and then return to the hospital the next morning. Next to cuisine is another building where patients can stay if they do not need a hospital bed but still need medical attention regularly. These patients can have long term IVs or wounds which need to be redressed frequently but do not need to be admitted.

Something that the hospital does that I found extremely interesting is that patient’s families can give blood onsite that will go to their family members. One doctor was saying there are some religions in Togo that believe if they give blood they will also get the illness of their family member. So the nurses talked to me into donating some of my blood since I am O negative. I walked to the lab and the nurse told them I was O negative and the lab guys cheered and told me they wanted to take all my blood.

After you give blood you get a coke!