By some strange coincidence, my last blog post (way back in May) was about the difficulty that some people go through to obtain medical care, any medical care, in PNG. It was the story about a man who journeyed for days to get his young niece to a clinic in order to get treatment for an injury she had sustained. The story turned out well in that the man was able to get to Australia, the girl was treated, and by now I am sure she is back home again.
Our family was plunged into a medical care story of a different sort when our new granddaughter Rebekah was born in May with serious Meconium Aspiration Syndrome. There were some complications at birth and at some point she had aspirated a large quantity of meconium and her lungs were essentially unusable.
She was immediately taken by ambulence to the University of Iowa hospital and admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) there. This is one of the best medical facilities in the US for treating infants so Rebekah has access to the latest technology and is being cared for by a wonderful team of dedicated doctors and nurses. She has been in the NICU for six weeks now. The first five weeks were touch and go and we almost lost her several times. But over the past week she has started to make progress. Her lungs are slowly being reinflated and we hope that within another week she will be breathing on her own, at least partially. Our best guess is that she will be in NICU for at least another two months.

Rebekah's NICU room
We are thankful that Rebekah lives in one of the few places in the world where she could have received treatment. In PNG she would not have made it and probably her mom would not have either. For all its problems our health care system is still the best in the world. Our prayer is that the leaders of PNG will make providing quality health care for the people there a priority. While their system will probably never equal ours, for any number of reasons, basic quality health care could be and should be available to every PNG citizen.
