And when you got there, the cupboard was bare!

So another working week draws to a close -a definite bonus for us here in Gulu is that we are free of shift-work, and we work Monday to Friday - a rare luxury to nurses! Our shifts are 8am to 5pm...although the locals perceive time keeping as a problem and work to 'Gulu time' - trying to make time-dependent arrangements is problematic to say the least when its accepted that you can be up to 1.5hours late!!!

We are certainly learning to become very resourceful nurses! This week the hospital has run out of so many essential items. There's a permanent shortage of gloves with supplies running out daily. The hospital also ran out of a large proportion of oral antibiotics, supplies of intravenous antibiotics completely ran out, as well as all intravenous fluids, and to top it all off we ran out of cannulas (drip ports!) The radiology department remains closed due to no availability of Xray film, there has been almost a permanent power cut to the hospital all week, and a problem developed with the mains supply of water! So all week there has been no running water to the hospital. Handwashing has been done in vats of rain water -thank goodness for frequents down pours (oh it can rain here!) and alcohol hand gel!

Over the last couple of weeks we have seen an increasing number of cases of Methanol poisoning. A bad batch of 'local spirit' has been doing the rounds and the consequences have been fatal. Ironically the antedote for methanol poisoning is pure alcohol! The nearest thing that is available here is the local spirit called 'Waragi' - tastes a bit like a mixture of surgical spirit and gin! So Dr Nik has literally been prescribing shots of alcohol to his patients in casualty making the unit not too dissimilar to a UK A+E department on a Saturday night! The sad reality however, is that a huge number of people have now died from methanol poisoning, or are exceptionally sick, and many have gone blind. Apparently it only takes 10ml (two teaspoons!) of the drink to make you loose your sight. And these people all just thought they would have a good night out. A very sobering thought.