Crisis Averted

 I was going to write this post on Wednesday and it would have just been titled 'Crisis'. Two days and positive movement has seemed to lessen the threat.

On Thursday, I started my day with almost frantic messages from the Theodora Ghana team that their internet was completely unstable and unusable. As we had a very early Rotary meeting they manage (acting as host, running slides, etc.), I had to jump in. I then started hearing from others in Ghana about lack of internet. 

It turned out this was no minor issue. All four of the underseas cables carrying internet traffic from South Africa to Europe were damaged. All of them! Approximately 8 countries including Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, & Benin were affected and it was almost a complete outage. Even banks were unable to function. I was unable to reach anyone on my team.

As I finally learned what the issue was, a grim thought started to come into my head. We were out of business. We would not be able to communicate with clients. We could not do any work for them. I started to think of options such as going to some U.S. providers. But I didn't really think we could pull that off because of cost, time, and the inability to communicate to even find out what to do.

On Saturday, I decided to try a regular phone call and reached my manager. On Sunday, there was some internet and we were connecting through WhatsApp. We determined regular mobile phone communication would work (but it is expensive). Also that they could get most of their work done if they worked late at night when there were fewer people on line. 

We'll see how things go today. It seems that we will be able to function.

Hospitalization Update

 We got our young Participant out today. She's tired (right, hospitals are the worst places to rest). But she seems to have recovered fine so we are all very happy. And for you Americans, you know that wages in Ghana are about a 10th of what a similar position would pay in the U.S. The same is true for many costs. Four days in the hospital, all tests done etc, medications, all those incidentals I discussed...$400.

de-I in Wonderland - A Ghana Hospital System Adventure

 One thing I DID NOT plan to do this trip was learn how to navigate the Ghanaian Hospital system. But learn to navigate it I did.

One of our Participants had been complaining of a pain in her right side. It was preventing her from lying on her side when she slept. By Tuesday morning the pain was acute and she was barely able to move. It's hard for a middle class or higher strata person in a developed country to conceptualize the what those in less developed countries who are not in the upper strata deal with medical issues. Our Participants, people who have fallen through the rather wide cracks of society here, have little to do with doctors or hospitals. 

This Participant does my local scheduling so we were scheduled to meet the first thing that morning and go to the office. She shows up at the apartment just about ready to collapse. Of course she doesn't know a thing about her own hospital system. First thing I do is go online and search for hospitals and emergency rooms. The search comes up dry. I find hospitals but none even mention having an emergency room. 

I call one my local board member who has been most closely working with our team. She tells me to call 112, the Ghana equivalent of 911. There is no answer, despite numerous tries. She tells me the hospitals that are close by. I look them up and call. No answer. By this time my Participant is in severe pain. My driver shows up. Another contact I reached out to tells me the closest hospital to me is the 37 Military Hospital and it has an emergency room. They didn't even show up on my search! I find out later they are considered one of the best in the city.

We arrive. Of course the emergency room looks nothing like anything I've seen. Even finding a reception person is a task. My colleague shows up to help me (she is a godsend). We are told we need a 'card' that registers our Participant. We are given vague directions of where to get said card. It takes waiting in three different lines to get the 'card'. Back to the emergency room. Wait. In the heat. No air conditioning. No chairs for any but patients. 

Finally, our young woman is seen. They tell us to get an ultrasound. This requires us to walk outside to another building. It takes an hour to navigate who to see, how to get in the queue, how to pay for said ultrasound (I will find you have to pay for each and every item you get for the process as you go along), then finally get the test done. We are told to come back in an hour and pick up the results. It is the patient's family or representative that has the responsibility to get the results back to the medical staff. Finally our young woman is entered into the emergency ward.

Now we are asked to by pharmaceuticals for our patient. Off we go again (some other Participants have shown up now to help with the process) to the Pharmacy to get the needed drugs. Again the three step process of checking in, paying, then getting what is needed. Blood work is needed. We carry the vials of blood to the lab where again we wander around trying to figure out where to drop things off only to find there is a check-in, pay, then drop off process...in this case all at different places. At each there is a crowd of people and no specific line. So you have to exert yourself. 

We finally get the ultrasound. We started this all by arriving at the hospital at 8am. It is now early afternoon. We are told they want to watch and observe our Participant. We come back in the early evening. They need us to buy more pharmaceuticals. At least we know what to do now. They want to observe her longer. We are told that at 5:30 to 6:30am the next day, they will either release her or have her enter the hospital proper. It is around 7:30pm and my driver is taking me back to my apartment. We get a call from one of our other women who was helping us. They want another blood test done. And because the hospital lab is closed we need to drive it to a 24 hour lab. And we have to pick it up and bring it back to the hospital. 

We get to the lab. They are noncommittal about when it will be ready. My driver ends up going back three times and it is only finally ready at 3pm the next day. Now they have admitted our Participant into the hospital proper. With us getting the final blood work, they have confirmed a diagnosis - acute pancreatitis. This is nothing to sneeze at. We are fortunate to have been able to get her taken care of. The care now is in line with what one would find in the the U.S. as far as the medical treatment. Except that the patient's family/representatives have to take care of all the non-medical needs. 

As of this writing, she is still in the hospital but improving visibly. She reports she feels much better but is weary of the hospital. The treatment for this condition is no food or external fluids, only intravenous. So she is hungry. We are hopeful that she will be released tomorrow, Friday. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Has been very stressful.

Numbers

These were published in Monday's paper

Population of New Mexico - 2.097 million
Number of Covid 19 Tests - 133,253
Number Who Tested Positive - 5,938
Number of Covid 19 Deaths - 265

% of our population tested - 6.35%
% of those tested that are positive - 4.46%
% of those tested that died - 0.2%
% of our population that tested positive - 0.28%
% of our population that has died - 0.001%

Let's assume that if we had done nothing that the fatalities from Covid-19 would have been 100 times worse. Fatalities would be 26,500. Annual automobile fatalities in New Mexico in 2018 were 27,288.

Population of the US - 328.2 million
Number of Covid 19 Tests - 11.5 Million
Deaths from Covid 19 in the US - 90,694
US Unemployed - 30.3 million 

% of US population that has died - 0.03%
% of US currently unemployed - 9.2%

Slightly Manic/Depressive But Mostly Up

Like all of us living in the locked-down (or nearly locked-down) world of Covid-19, it is an interesting exercise adjusting one's living patterns, work patterns and emotional patterns. I find myself bouncing around between being very depressed and morose to being very positive and upbeat.

On the depressive side, I simply don't have any confidence that our governments are truly doing crisis management with a depth of understanding. We know that as a country the U.S. ignored the planning that was necessary to be good crisis managers. Now we are seeing our political leaders basically winging it in a very dynamic environment with a ton of interrelated variables, many of which the leaders don't understand. This is particularly true of the economic variables. To hear leaders and pundits say the economy has the possibility of going into a recession is one of the most absurd things I have ever heard. You can't completely shut down vast portions of the economy and not have a recession result. Money has to flow in an economy for it to function. When you stop that flow, economies implode. It's that simple. So lock down an entire economy for months at a time and you are going to have a recession if not a depression. So as I hear our leaders and pundits seemingly wondering about this, I go into a funk because they clearly don't understand the consequences of their decisions.

So much for the depressive. Now for the positive...maybe even manic side. I am as busy as ever. I have replaced my entire business schedule with virtual meetings. I would say some of these are more productive than they would have been in person. I was to go to California this week. #1 had set up four meetings related to Theodora. We held each virtually. They were great successes with lots of good thoughts and follow-up ideas. I have had numerous meetings with clients and networking connections. I am impressed with the amount of positive thinking trying to figure out how best to make it through this environment. It gives me hope that even if our governments won't be good stewards of the economy that maybe the participants will!

One thing that is nice. Each of my days is full of activity, thinking, planning, building, working. I may be restrained physically but not mentally or emotionally.