Clinical Pictures

This man is suffering from an enormous swelling of the scrotum. The likely cause is a blockage in the lymphatic drainage caused by parasites.

The child has a very bad case of scabies affecting much of the skin.

We saw a lot of long standing wounds which had failed to heal. This was one of the worst.

Cleaning and dressing long standing wounds was something we could do successfully. This necessitates removing all the necrotic (dead) tissue and infected material from the area, then supplying enough sterile dressings so the patient can keep the area clean while natural healing occurs.

Here Harp and Dave work on a child. We used lidocaine injections around the area to dull the pain, but it could still be an unpleasant experience for the patient.

This child's hand was burned in the past, limiting the movement of several fingers. Burns are fairly common among young children when cooking is done over open fires on the ground.

This elderly gentleman presented with a large lipoma (fatty growth) on the back of his neck. These are relatively easy to remove so Tracy undertook the surgery assisted by Harp and Effie. We obviously could not make the operative field sterile, but we did have an adequate supply of surgical drapes and instruments. The first picture shows the area being disinfected.

To remove a lipoma a large incision is made in the skin, the growth carefully dissected out with blunt instruments, any bleeding vessels tied off and the wound repaired with sutures.

We carried out several such lipoma removals, and though we were unable to carry out follow up care the patient's quality of life is likely to have greatly improved.

The final picture shows the size of the growth removed. Once the wound heals the lipoma will not recur.

Another example of a lipoma successfully removed.

This young man has a large keloid (mass of scar tissue) above his ear. This was relatively easy to remove as the attachment to the skin was small. Teresa and Kate did the surgery with a very neat end result.

Unfortunately a keloid is likely to regrow, and the patient has to understand this before the surgery. The process will be slow, though, and his appearance will be much improved for some time.

Two unusually healthy twins.

This lady's abdomen shows scarring from ritual tribal markings. Many tribes have traditional ways of decorating themselves.