I am a 10-year-old boy.
I lived in a village near a refugee camp in South Sudan.
Today, I was taken to the hospital in the refugee camp in the evening due to weight loss.
I was drowsy and had weak muscles, but had no fever or cough.
I’m his mother.
We live in a village outside the refugee camp.
It’s hard to get food there either, and there’s no hospital nearby.
The nearest hospital is about a four-hour drive away. I don’t have a car so it’s almost impossible to get to a hospital.
My son has lost a lot of weight recently, and he has been looking lethargic.
I’ve also been coughing and producing sputum for the past few months.
I was worried about my son’s condition, but I had no choice but to wait and see him at home.
However, today I heard that there is a hospital in the refugee camp, so I brought my son here.
I’m a health staff.
It’s quite common for children from villages outside the refugee camp to come to our hospital due to malnutrition.
This boy was also diagnosed with malnutrition and we started treatment for him that day.
His mother, who was accompanying him, was heavily coughing.
On the same day of his admission, we took his mother’s sputum sample and sent it for a tuberculosis test.
Unfortunately, the boy passed away that night.
The test results for the mother’s sputum came back the following morning, and she was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
The boy may have also had tuberculosis.
There is a connection between “tuberculosis” and “weight loss/malnutrition”.
If you have tuberculosis, you may lose weight.
Conversely, if you are malnourished, your immune system weakens, making you more susceptible to developing tuberculosis.
If he had come to the hospital earlier and started treatment for malnutrition and tuberculosis, he might not have died. I am so sad.
Life is tough for refugees living in camps.
But sometimes people in the villages surrounding the camps also face problems such as food shortages, being far from hospitals, or not having enough money to go to the hospital.
We must not forget about these people too.
How can I solve this situation?
