Fishing Trip Turns Into Life-Threatening Situation

Fishing is an important part of life at Kivaumai. In addition to making up a huge portion of the peoples’ diet, they also use their catch of the day to trade with neighbouring villages for vegetables and fruit.
 One day last week, Margaret* was fishing and stepped on a small stick. A seemingly mild injury still hadn’t healed so when the YWAM Medical Ship came by a week later, she decided to see the visiting doctor.
 Dr Grace and primary health care worker, Neville, went to visit Margaret at her home. When they arrived, the small sore had swollen and was causing her blood pressure to spike at a very high rate. In fact, it was so high, that it was not safe to do the procedure to clean the infected wound.
 They gave her medication to bring the blood pressure down and made a house call the following day. Her blood pressure was still high but had come down just enough to safely complete the procedure. The wound was lanced and cleaned but the infection had left a 3 cm hole in the bottom of her foot, critically close to the bone.
Margaret was advised she would need to take a trip to the health centre at Kapuna to surgically remove the dead skin that remained from the wound. The health worker as Kivaumai is working to get her there urgently. Without immediate surgery, she will be in danger of losing her foot.
Without the quick attention of the YWAM medical team, she would’ve certainly been in critical danger of losing her life.