It made my toes itch just looking at it!

I could not believe the 4 month old baby was not in a constant scream, but he was very content. “Scabies” is what the clinic nurse pronounced the rash of blisters to be. From the “clinic”, to reach the young families hut, the young male nurse walked barefoot on the dirt path for an hour. For over a week the baby had been suffering. It is amazing the affliction had not spread to other parts of its body as the baby wiggled and rubbed its body parts. So too, the parents did nothing to keep a distance from or to cover the affected foot. But the nurse had no medicine, with him or at the clinic, to treat the problem. It was left to heal or grow worse on its own. The parents only had stream water to rinse the wounds and leaves from the jungle to squeeze on the sores.

When we landed our dinghy on the remote island, Vanua Lava, to attend a 4 day festival, we were immediately taken to the parents hut to assess the medical problem. Many cruisers have a far better familiarity of medical matters and posses a treasure of treatments compared to the local facilities. Wanting to do no harm, we would not give antibiotics to such a young child. From my backpack, we donated a bottle of drinking water. The tank water on Brick House I often test for pathogens and a proper chlorine content to maintain our own health. With this water the parents could irrigate the sores. We would return the following day with a topical antibiotic.

The next morning, upon checking on our patient, we found the one liter bottle of water was empty. Some of the water was apparently used to rinse the baby’s foot, the rest, someone drank!

In my back pack, I carried more drinking water with which we irrigated the foot then applied Bactroban cream. The next donated bottle of water contained a slightly higher content of chlorine. It would be equal to 3.0 on a swimming pool test kit. No pathogens can live in that water. That bottle was well marked, “Do Not Drink, Medicine”. Each morning and evening, at the end of the days festivities, we checked and treated our medical project. Each day showed an improvement. The blisters had burst open, began drying and the redness was fading to a more normal skin color. We also made sure the wounds were covered with a bandage and a stocking as much to keep the fly’s off as to keep the affliction from spreading. On the fifth day, before we pulled up anchor and departed this village, we visited the baby and family one last time. We left them more bandages and a tube of Triple Antibiotic Ointment.

Vanuatu can be a paradise, of what Americans would think to be million dollar water front properties, surrounded by all the sustenance needed for a comfortable village life, but it can also be a difficult life where there is next to no medical facilities. A week later, another visiting cruiser looked at the same child and reported the foot was well on the mend.

We do what we can to help the villagers we meet. They repay us with garden grown fruits, vegetables and their friendship.