Nurses at the therapeutic Stabilization Center in the Kaabong Referral Hospital call him "the miracle baby. Baby Monday's mother went into premature labor in Kathile, a tiny village in Karamoja, the arid and sparsely populated region of northeastern Uganda bordering Sudan. During childbirth, she had a retained placenta, an easily treatable condition where the placenta is left behind in a woman's uterus. But because the family had no transportation to the nearest hospital-only 11 miles away-hours were lost while they tried to get help for the ailing mother and baby.
Finally, a small truck was rented in Kaabong, but it broke down on the way to the hospital, and Baby Monday's mother never made it there alive.
The fact that the infant survived the journey in his grandmother's arms over the rough and difficult terrain from Kathile to Kaabong is just one of the reasons that have earned him his unlikely nickname. At birth Baby Monday weighed just three pounds. In the United States, a premature baby would be kept in an incubator for weeks, but there are no incubators at the Kaabong Referral Hospital, nor is there electricity to power a heating lamp that might keep his little body warm.
So Baby Monday was wrapped in a bundle of wool blankets and kept in the sun whenever possible to keep his temperature up. We put him on a quinine drip and gave him oxygen and, amazingly, he recovered from the malaria and began gaining weight. Looking after him at all hours was his eight-year-old sister, Nakolong. Being the sole caregiver of a premature infant and waking up several times a night for the feedings would be enough to break most people, let alone an eight-year-old.
But Nakalong said she didn't mind at all. When I have time I play with the other children at the hospital. Here we have medicine and food so we have to stay here until my brother is ok. Located within local hospitals, the centers are dedicated to the treatment of the most severe cases of malnutrition in young children and women who are pregnant or nursing. In addition to supplying therapeutic nutritional products and other essential medicines, ACF trains hospital staff to treat the condition so that they can eventually assume responsibility for managing the centers.
