HIV/AIDS 3 of 3 – Medical Kit (Sally Smith)

I'm very happy to bring back to you this week our friend Sally.  She's been talking to us for the last two weeks about HIV and AIDS.  Sally does know quite a lot about HIV.  She worked overseas for about 16 years and while she was there she developed and ran an HIV/AIDS prevention education and care program.  This program was very important as it helped to train nurses and develop curriculum in schools.  I hope that you've enjoyed her talk.  I've been very encouraged as I listen to her speak, her calm manner and her assurance that AIDS patients are people that we can minister to safely, without any fear.  Sally told us in her very first program that there really are only four ways that a person can contract the AIDS virus.  One is through sexual contact.  Another is through dirty needles.  A third way is through pregnancy.  If a mother is infected, she could pass the disease off to her child.  And the fourth was blood, and she mentioned a lot of information last week about the importance of being careful when cleaning wounds.  Today she comes to bring us some information on how we can develop a medical kit for our homes or when we travel.  She has lots of good suggestions on what to put in that kit.  She also uses some terms that might be a little different to those of us from North America.  She uses the term "sticking plasters" which we would call band-aids, and she also uses the word "torch" which we would call a flashlight.  So if you hear those items, you'll know what she's talking about.  So I welcome you Sally.  Do talk to us.  Tell us what we need to know as parents and as those of us who travel with children or our families, what we should have in our medical bag. 

Well, I think lots of families, if you’re on the move with small children you would have to make up a bag or a wash bag with some basic medical supplies in it when you go on holiday, when you travel and I think every family should set one of these up.  If you’re a single person or a couple, you should have something that you just keep for when you travel.  It would include basic things like some basic pain killers if you had a headache, maybe something for indigestion, maybe some tablets to stop diarrhea if you were going to go on a long train journey or a plane journey.  Still, if you’re traveling you might need that.  So, those are the kind of things you have in a medical kit.  You'd probably have some sticking plasters for small cuts, maybe a small pair of scissors.  So that would be the standard kind of medical kit.

You've mentioned some very basic items Sally.  Thanks.  Are there some specific things that you would want us to include today because of the AIDS virus?

In the days of HIV and AIDS, there are a few things that you maybe want to think about adding to your kit.  I think now it would be good to have something to clean a wound with, maybe some cotton wool, maybe some kind of cleansing cleaning solution or some water so that if you were caught out somewhere and it was a dirty place and you did have a cut, you could clean up before you put the sticking plasters on.  Another thing would be a thin pair of gloves.  You can buy these very thin gloves for housework these days that are just the same as the ones they use in hospitals, and just a small pair of gloves in the medical kit means that if you’re helping someone else who’s bleeding, cover your own hands.  One of the dangers for HIV transmission is where there has been an accident.  You may be rushing to help but you may also have been involved in that accident and you don’t realize that you are also bleeding – you’re also cut and bleeding.  If your own hands have not got any cuts on them and you’re helping someone who’s bleeding, there’s really no risk of catching HIV from that person.  But, if you have also been cut or injured in the accident or if there’s a lot of broken glass around and you get cut in the process, then that’s the time when the blood can mix and that’s the time when you might catch HIV.  So you need a pair of thin gloves in your kit so that if you are cleaning up a wound that’s bleeding quite a lot, it is just protecting your own hands.  One thing we’ve been suggesting to people who maybe travel by jeep or a car into remote areas or who travel by light aircraft, is that they might think to add to their kit a pair of stiff leather gloves.  Again, if you are in an accident and you need to pull people out of a car and there’s broken glass around, you need to protect yourself from cuts so that you’re not going to be in a situation where the blood can mix with someone else that you don’t know.  You want a strong torch as well, so that you can see what’s going on, you can see where the glass is broken; you can maybe see where people are bleeding.  Accidents often happen in the dark because you can’t see properly on the road.  So light aircraft or taking cars or jeeps into remote areas… and just to be sensitive and to be thinking about if I'm going to rush in and be a help here in an accident situation, I want to give the greatest help to the people I’m helping, but I also need to protect my own health.  I think a number of organisations these days are sending their workers out with small medical kits and they would also include a few sterile syringes and needles and again it depends on the remoteness of the region that you live in.  If you live nearby to a clinic and a medical facility, then you probably don’t need anything for giving intravenous fluids.  If you live in a more remote area, you may want to have a kit for giving intravenous fluids and your home doctor would give you that.  You’ll be able to get that from a pharmacy or a doctor in your sending country.  You might also want to talk to them about whether you need a bottle or a plastic container of blood expanding fluid for emergency use.  If we’re close to medical facilities, we don’t need that.

Sally, do you have any suggestions about receiving blood from a local hospital that you really don't know much about?

One thing you might want to do is to check out the local hospital and find out how safe the blood supply is.  One way you can do that is to go and offer to be a blood donor.  You’re not going to catch HIV by giving your blood.  You’ll be saving lives and helping other people in the process.  Usually most hospitals will have separate kits.  They come prepackaged with a little bag to collect the blood and the pipe and the needle.  Those are usually prepackaged and sterilized.  The only danger would be if they’re reusing those.  Provided they have new kits and you can see that they’ve opened a new kit for you and it’s a sterile new kit, you're not going to be in any danger by giving your blood.  That gives you the opportunity to get to know the local hospital and the local clinic services to donate your blood, help toward someone else’s survival, and at the same time you can ask "oh what happens to this blood  Do you test it for things? What happens?  Is it tested for HIV, for example?”   You can find out whether the blood supply in that local hospital would be safe if you or your family members or any of your visitors needed to go to the hospital for any reason.

Do you have advice about blood transfusion? 

The advice we would always give is to avoid having your blood transfusion in a country that’s not your own unless it’s a life threatening emergency.  Try and go for these fluid expanding fluids instead.  If your family member has been in an accident you can ask the doctor "is it really necessary for a blood transfusion or can we use blood expanding fluids instead?”  So just avoid that.  If it is really necessary then the blood should always be tested for HIV before it’s given.

Those are good ideas Sally, especially when you're never sure if you'll need a transfusion.  It's probably good to know a little bit about the hospital that is near you and how safe their blood supply is.  Now as you get ready to close Sally, what would be your final suggestions?

Something we need to think about before we go overseas is to have any non-urgent surgical procedures done -- dental work.   One thing we need to think about overseas is not to go and have any tattoos or any piercings.  Those of you who have teenage children will know that it’s very popular these days to have many, many ear piercings and belly button piercings and all kinds of things.  Tattoos and piercings are a risk, especially in certain places -- maybe small boutiques where they may not have the necessary sterilization and hygiene procedures.  So we should certainly discourage our teenagers and other adults from going and having these procedures done overseas.

Thank you so much Sally for being with us today on MemCare by Radio.  The last three weeks you have given us some good information about the importance of ministering to those with AIDS.  You've helped us to talk to our children about the importance of being careful where there are wounds and blood, because blood is a very good transmitter of the AIDS virus, and even today how to have a good medical pack and things to have in it, along with some safety issues for the hospitals where we live near and even staying away from things like a boutique for tattooing or for piercing.  Sometimes we just don't think about those things being a place where you could contract AIDS.

I've appreciated your messages so much!  Thank you for joining us again on MemCare.