Samuel did not have the best of starts to life. His mother died when he was six, leaving him under the care of his teenage sister and an alcoholic father who was rarely around. Soon his sister was pregnant and now, four years later, her first born is in school and she is pregnant again.
Growing up with a teenage sister as a mother figure and a drunken father who would disappear for weeks on end, it is not a surprise that no-one noticed the early signs of typhoid. Nor is it a surprise that no-one thought they should spend the 20 shillings (18p) to take Samuel to the clinic to get the simple cure for such a disease.
When Samuel was rushed to hospital with crippling abdominal pains, he was an otherwise happy, healthy kid, working hard at Mogra with many friends and hopes for the future. Six weeks after his first operation to remove the parts of his bowel that had perforated and seven further operations since then, he is nothing but skin and bones, unable to move and unable to talk. He has suffered days of dehydration and starvation as there has not been the money for drugs, or they have not been able to get an IV line in. Due to the infection and repeated surgery, his abdominal wound will no longer close and a surgical dressing is what keeps his intestines inside. He looks like a skeleton and his big brown, sad eyes plead with you when you come into his sight. When Hannah put her hand on the bed, his little skinny hand reached out to her.
His mother's brother sits by his bed day and night, he helps with the basic nursing care, washing him and changing his sheets.
Despite the low conscious level, the continuous oxygen therapy and the absence of any body fat, the doctors feel it is not a completely hopeless case, they say his kidneys are still working (only just) and the liver function tests were OK. They say that what is left of his bowel will be enough to function once the infection has cleared. There are only three nurses on the children's ward for over sixty patients, no-one seemed to know when he had last passed urine or when his IV nutrition was started. He also needs blood, but his group is O negative and it is hard to find.
I am now in the difficult situation of trying to decide if it is worth looking for money to transfer him to a hopsital where he can get good enough care. If his gut does work and his kidneys don't fail then he will probably survive if we act quickly, but we would need at least £10,000 to give him a chance and that amount of money could make a real difference to the rest of the project that helps a thousand children. I just feel so sad for Samuel, who has never had a chance in his life and angry at the injustice in the world that would see a ten year old child die: If his family had had the 20 shillings, none of this would have happened.
