Life-saving IV fluid arrived just in time for gunshot victim in northern Chad
The night before a flight to northern Chad we received a call from Dr. Mark Hotchkin, the missionary surgeon at the hospital in Bardaï. It was an urgent request for as much IV fluid as we could put on the already almost-full flight.
Dr Hotchkin was treating a gunshot wound and had managed to patch a perforated bladder and small intestine, but the patient had already used half a box of IV fluid and the supply was now critically low.
The patient would not have survived.
Four boxes of fluid were brought to the hangar in N’Djamena at 6:00am the next morning and after a couple of unnecessary seats were removed, the Ground Ops team managed to get all of it on board in time for the flight later that day. When the aircraft arrived in Bardai, the IV fluid was unloaded and taken to the hospital, where Dr. Hotchkin was able to administer it to the patient.
The next day he reported that the patient was getting better, and how timely the delivery had been. “The IV fluids were used straight away; without them the patient would not have survived.”