09/21/2025
When 2 week old Wedmaël Belle Fleur was waiting in his mother’s arms for consultation in our clinic two months ago, he was crying loudly, as only a newborn infant can. The skin on his face was wrinkled, his mouth was dry, his skin hot and he was obviously very ill. Any infant less than 30 days of age with a fever needs to be hospitalized to receive IV or IM antibiotics for treatment of infection in the blood stream (sepsis). As soon as I finished examining him, I explained to the parents that they needed to take him immediately to the government hospital in Jérémie. I wrote a referral letter to the doctors at the hospital, gave the parents some money to help them pay for the hospitalization and prayed for them as they took little Wedmaël out the door. “If they get down to the hospital quickly and he’s given the antibiotics, he should live,” I thought.
You can imagine my dismay to see the parents a week later with little Wedmaël, still crying, still dehydrated, still with a fever. They had indeed gone to the hospital, but instead of being given IV antibiotics, the parents were given prescriptions for oral Amoxicillin. I was very upset. The infant was still obviously ill, had lost a pound of weight and needed hospitalization. So, I wrote another letter to the hospital doctors, this time outlining the dosage of each medication I felt would be good to give the infant. I hoped they wouldn’t be offended by my suggestions! I gave the parents a few dollars and sent them down the mountain to try again! This time my efforts succeeded and when they returned with Wedmaël 18 days later, he looked much better and his weight was up a few ounces. The parents said he had been given IV antibiotics and no longer had a fever. He wasn’t breastfeeding very well so they were giving him formula. We saw him again last week and his weight was up, he was active and feeding well. We continue to give the parents infant formula for him and we have hope he’ll continue to thrive. We give thanks for all of you who pray for our patients and for our faithful donors who give to our Indigent Patient Fund to help care for little ones like Wedmaël.