Milly 6yrs old from Iganga  district was admitted to Kiruddu hospital  with severe  burns of the upper limbs, trunk and left leg. This young girl got burnt while the mother had left home to go to the nearby bush to collect long grass to be used as a compound broom.  In less than an hour’s time, the  mother was astonished to hear a child’s wailing voice emerging from the direction of her home. Immediately, she  dropped  everything she  was doing and followed up the wailing voice and to her surprise; it was coming from her home. Taking a closer look, it was her daughter roasting in a burning flame. She said that she became helpless for some time until she suddenly thought of pulling her daughter out of the fire, then cried for some help from her distant neighborhood. She was later helped by  some sympathizers who rescued the daughter from the fire and  took  her to the nearest medical facility to have some first aid treatment because she had been severely burnt. The fact that this facility couldn’t manage this kind of extensive burns, the team referred the patient to Jinja regional referral hospital where she was hospitalized and managed for over a month.

The fact that  Milly’s burns were very extensive, she needed an Intensive Care Unit ( ICU) for proper management and from that the primary team of Jinja regional referral hospital decided to transfer her to Kiruddu referral hospital in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, where she received care for two months.

Milly’s mother has ten children from three different men and she said the last husband she had is the father of Milly and he has never been supportive. The other  children  from  her  first  two marriages,  have never bothered caring about her neither visit her. She says one of her big daughters is married in Kampala,  the capital city of  Uganda, but  she has never  known where she  is. Likewise, her  big son has a job, but she has never known his whereabouts because they used to stay with their  father ever since she divorced.  Milly’s mother said that her daughter got burnt because she suffers from epilepsy. She said for several months she had been  very cautious about Milly not sitting  near a fire place ever since she was  taught about some of the predisposing causes.  Milly’s other big siblings are married, but have never been of any support to their mother because they were raised by their fathers. Milly’s mother is a peasant farmer and goes around their village digging in some people’s gardens to earn a living. This has been the kind of life she has led for 5years.

When Milly was referred to Kiruddu hospital, she was in a very critical condition and needed albumin levels raised as soon as possible to keep her alive. The  primary  team on receiving her, decided  to start an immediate blood  transfusion,  and  carried  out  some blood parameters that  would determine her albumin levels in the body. The primary team met the Caring Team and requested if we could get on board and help buy some albumin to improve the life of Milly. Surprisingly, it was still early enough that a bottle of albumin was got from the nearby pharmacy, put up and created an immediate change in Milly’s life.

Currently, Milly is much better, the skin grafting has been done thrice and the recipient and donor sites have properly healed. Her nutritional status is better and I hope in couple of days she will be let go home and attend to a nearby facility for some dressing,

We thank God for the life of this little girl and for the vision of the President of Caring Hands, and love to encourage each one of us to have the spirit of love to our fellow people.

God  bless  the  Caring  Hands  Foundation  and  all  the  multi  disciplinary  team on level four Kiruddu hospital for the tremendous work done.