Beat the odds

I recently read an article about how important it is to wash your hands before you pick up a baby. It is understandable; babies are so small and can’t fight all the germs introduced to them.

This baby was born 2 weeks ago. His mother was sick and he was delivered via c-section. She died during the surgery and so his grandmother has brought him home to her hut and is raising him. As I look around their hut, it astonishes me that any child in the village can survive the conditions they are raised in. To stack more odds against this little one, he is drinking formula. The water used to make this formula is from an open (i.e., unhygienic) well. When I sat with grandma to ask her how she prepared the formula, I was relieved to hear that she was taught to boil the water and to use boiling water to wash the bottle.

This baby seems so small and the hut seems so dirty. What a miracle that Niger’s child mortality rate (death of children under age 5 for every 1000 live births) has decreased from 226 in 1998 to 96 in 2015.  Pretty good, but it is 5 in Canada.

Typical view of outside a hut

I’m not sure where I am going with this post. Just that sometimes, it seems impossible. What are we doing here and how are we helping?

I pray that re-iterating the need to boil the well water, to clean the bottle with boiling water, and to throw away formula that is not drunk will help him beat the odds.  I pray that all the germs that are introduced to him will make him stronger and will not make him a statistic. God help us to help the poor, to have compassion, and to not despair.