Miracle at Malumghat

In March of this year, I received an email from Jay Litchfield, an excellent family physician serving longterm at Memorial Christian Hospital in Malumghat, Bangladesh. He included a picture of a blood slide of a middle aged national pastor. Both Jay and the chief lab tech, Swapan Sarkar (shown below with other techs in the lab), suspected acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) which is rapidly progressive and which requires urgent treatment if there is to be any chance of survival. In the US, AML is usually treated only at large tertiary care hospitals with all of the intensive supportive and treatment options needed such as specialized cancer floors, full service lab, blood bank and x ray departments with CT/MRI/etc not to mention availability of consultants in infectious disease, pulmonary medicine, and critical care !!

I told Jay by email that his diagnosis was correct and outlined the treatment plan we would use here in the US. He indicated, to my amazement, that he could get the 2 critical intravenous drugs necessary to give the patient a fighting chance and would get treatment started. He did a bone marrow examination which was sent with a shorttermer to a pathologist in Kalamazoo, Michigan - a week later, the pathologist confirmed the diagnosis and reported that the subtype of AML (promyelocytic) was one that requires a 3rd drug given orally for the best hope of success. Jay said that he would see if they could get that drug from Chittagong, the 2nd largest city in the country, located hours away by car. I almost fainted when he reported back that the 3rd drug was available!!

Over the course of 3-4 weeks, the patient went into remission and is now getting followup treatments meant to solidify the remission. His outlook, now that he has overcome the HUGE hurdle of getting into remission in a third world country, is excellent !!!!

In contrast to what I listed above regarding how a similar patient would be treated in the US, the Bangladeshi patient was treated in a small hospital in a very small town, in the middle of a third world country, by a diligent caring physician who had no specialized training in cancer, no specialized blood products apart from whole blood, no x ray capability beyond ultrasound, no availability of fancy cultures, and no subspecialty consultants to assist him. The patient withstood TREMENDOUS infectious and bleeding complications throughout his treatment course yet still survived and, better yet, went into remission !!!! Many people in Bangladesh and around the world were fervently praying for the patient's healing and God answered !!!

Is this a miracle????...you decide !!!