Scantania

This is Scantania. She is four-years-old and much cuter than a bugs ear! Scanti (as her mom calls her) recently suffered an injury that is all to common in our rural community. She fell into a cooking pot of boiling fluid. She actually fell backwards and burned her bottom badly. She threw her arms back to try and break her fall and had her hands burned as well.

She had pretty horrific third degree burns and spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. She was discharged earlier this week and is coming to our clinic for regular debrieding and dressing changes. The debrieding involves the removal of the dead tissue. It is a pretty traumatic procedure for poor little Scanti. If you look closely at her right hand you will see the pink skin showing through after we removed all of the dead crusted skin over it. She is such a trooper. And she is probably one of the most eloquent four-year-olds I've ever met.

She was given a doll at her last visit. During the procedure she cried out in Swahili "I don't need your things, take the doll back and stop!".

Please pray with us for the quick healing and recovery of Scantania. Also pray for wisdom on how best to approach this issue in our community. The challenge is that women cook over fires on the ground. Unfortunately we see these types of injuries all too often. I'd like to start doing more education in our community about putting up some sort of barrier around the cooking fire.