Village Children with Complex Diseases

Mikala has been talking with us about the many children she sees through home based education that have challenges that no one has been able to help with in all of Zambia. It is so hard to listen to these stories and to know the enormous wealth and capacity within the U.S. We bought Mikala a flip video camera and have taught her how to use it and upload and e-mail the files. We are hopeful that she will be able to send us these files and we can find MDs to help us figure out what might possibly be going on with these children but more importantly what they might be able to do to help the children. To give you one example Mikala saw an almost 4 year old child in a village right before we got here. Mikala described this child’s condition as her “skin is melting.” We asked Mikala if the skin looked the same all over this child’s body or if it was just on the areas where the skin was exposed to the sun. Mikala called the home based education teacher and a few days later heard back that it is all over the child’s body. From Mikala’s description it sounds like it looks as if the skin is severely burned. The child’s mother rubs ashes onto the skin and into these wounds. Mikala says the child walks with an unusual gait because she feels the child is in a lot of pain. The child’s mother says that the village people believe that this disease is happening with the child because the mother must have stepped over a snake when she was pregnant. This belief is though of because the child’s skin is affected much like a snakes skin sheds.