I have experienced my fair share of trauma here in Northern Ghana’s premier level one trauma center the Baptist Medical Center.  The most common injuries we see are orthopedic injuries caused by moto accidents or people falling off of lories (large trucks).  RTA (road traffic accidents) as they call them here.  No one wears helmets so we see lots of head injuries, unfortunately with the resources available here most of those severe injuries are fatal.  We have the occasional kid that falls from a tree or even worse I have had many pregnant women fall from trees. (It seems absolutely crazy to me, but they are 7 months pregnant climbing trees to collect firewood.)  Two serious liver lacerations came into the hospital in the same week.  I have seen many hand injuries from home made guns backfiring and had one crazy night of multiple victims with gunshot wounds when a tribal war broke out.  And then there are of course the crazy random trauma stories you hear that you just can wrap your mind around how it really happened, but if the patient says that is what happened, well who am I to doubt him.  But my favorite trauma to see out of everything is the penetrating trauma via a bull’s horn.  I have had many men come in after being impaled by a bull (one unlucky fellow got it right in his business).  Today, as I operated on the boy below I got a lesson on how it happens.  The long and short of it is, never get in front of a bull that you have spent the day whipping and not feeding so you can get your fields plowed . . . the bull will probably be angry with you and lash out.  Don’t say I never warned you.

Omentum coming out of the patients gore wound.