January 15, 2016

The gun and knife club has arrived in Bere. Earlier this week we had a patient that had been stabbed in the abdomen. It had perforated his stomach and his liver. He is doing well. It seems that his cows had gotten into someone's rice so they decided to punish him. Now his relatives have taken revenge and bought a gun (which I thought was illegal here in Chad to own one) and shot the man in his back. The bullet glanced his vertebra and kidney and perforated intestines two times which we had to repair and then the bullet came out his front. We have had one or two emergency surgeries every day this week. We had a c-section in a multiparous lady with some sort of thick band in the uterus that would not let the baby come through and she had had no previous surgeries. 

It is at least 10 degrees warmer than it has been the past month. Now the lows are in the upper 60's instead of the 50's F and the highs are in the 90's F instead of the 80's. I think the harmattan dust has diminished somewhat and there is less north wind out of the desert. 

When we were in Denmark we were told that there were no guns allowed and that even most of the police did not carry a gun which we could see was fact. Denmark also has health care for everybody at no charge. Norway and Sweden have a very low co-pay. Of course they have higher taxes but when you compute all the extra costs in USA that are not covered with taxes or insurance it probably comes out about the same. In USA we have the greedy pharmaceutical companies and lawyers that drive up costs of everything so much. Here in Chad we have so much corruption but there seems to be some almost everywhere. 

We are well and in no danger that we know about any more than normal.
Our emails are drbland@sbcglobal.net and dfbland01@gmail.com.

Rollin and Dolores Bland
Hopital Adventist de Bere
Boite Postal 52
Kelo, Tandjile, Chad, Afrique