Medicine and Pediatrics

Medicine and Paediatrics are closely linked at LAMB, since much of the physician work is focused on children.

Nevertheless there is still a very considerable medical activity for adults, both male and female.

Adult inpatients most commonly stay because of tuberculosis complications – the disease or the medication, self-poisoning, heart failure, typhoid fever or diarrhea.

Adult medical outpatients typically might have gastritis, pneumonia, skin problems, asthma, arthritis, or high blood pressure. Most are also offered worm treatment.

Tuberculosis is a particularly widespread public health program and a special 5 bed TB ward is designated for treatment of complicated TB cases.

Paediatrics

As stated elsewhere on this website, in Bangladesh

• 22 % of babies are Low Birth Weight – less than 2.5 kg/ 5lbs 9 oz at birth
• 1 in 27 babies born alive dies in their first month[1]
• 1 in 15 children dies before their 5^th birthday¹
• It is estimated that 43% of children under 5 years old are stunted (short for their age) ¹

How does LAMB help children?

LAMB’s caring for children works through

• both preventative and curative services,
• across the community and in the hospital.

Paediatrics is part of LAMB’s integrated three tier approach to healthcare, with links right through from village to hospital.  Our main strategy involved ‘Integrated Management of Childhood Illness’ (IMCI), a    WHO-developed program to support good household decision-making and clinical care for <5 children.

1.        Home to home

In the community, LAMB trained Village Health Volunteers visit house to house with health messages.  Examples are “how to treat diarrhea” and “how to prevent drowning” – two of the leading causes of under 5 deaths in Bangladesh.
The VHVs also carry out monitoring of the development of children, e.g. growth in weight, to identify potential problems.

2.        Local Health Care Centres

Staffed by LAMB paramedics who are trained to manage simple childhood illnesses.  They also identify more serious problems, and so can readily refer these to convenient hospitals.
For children with disability, community rehabilitation services are available to help.

3.       Tertiary level: LAMB Hospital

The Paediatric unit operates an Outpatients service six days per week, and has a 34-bed Paediatric Ward for Inpatients.

The leading cause for admission is infection related.  An active cleft lip and palate program by the resident LAMB surgeon and visiting teams of volunteer surgeons from Bangladesh and overseas carry out typically about 40 operations within a 1-2 week period.

We use resource-appropriate, evidence based interventions eg Kangaroo Mother Care for low birth weight newborn babies.