Jacob Chery - Thrush/Dehydration

Jacob Chery is a 10-month-old baby boy who lives in the Cite Soleil area.  His mother is mentally handicapped. We have been supporting the family with food and 3 of the older children in the Chery family are students in our school program here at Coram Deo. For the last few weeks the grandmother would call and say that Jacob has diarrhea. I told her to bring him here to see how he was doing. A couple of weeks ago she called and said that she had taken him to the St. Catherine Hospital in Cite Soleil and that the doctor had referred her to a hougan (witchdoctor). I told her that a medical doctor would never refer a patient to a hougan. She didn't listen and went to see the hougan. The hougan had told her that Jacob was sick because he had an evil spirit. I told her to bring him here so that I could see how Jacob was doing. Finally yesterday Stephanie came with Jacob and he was not doing well. He was dehydrated and unresponsive. He was too weak to cry. We brought him over to Bernard Mevs Hospital to the emergency room and they started and iv. The doctors struggled at first to find a vein for placing the iv. There was no beds available in the paediatrics room and this morning Jacob was transferred to the state hospital Hopital La Paix. As soon as we looked at Jacob's mouth and saw the white tongue we knew what he had. He has a bad case of thrush. If the family had only come to the house a few weeks ago he could have been treated with nystatin and the thrush wouldn't spread throughout his digestive system. Please keep Jacob in prayer, that the medicine he is given will help him to get stronger and fight off the thrush. Please keep his family in prayer as they have one foot in Christianity and one foot in Voodoo. The family is convinced that the "dyab manje" ( devil is taking/"eating") him. Fonise did a good job staying with Stephanie at the hospital until the grandmother came late in the afternoon. Fonise and the other women here at Coram Deo did a good job at telling/explaining to the family that their child wasn't being overtaken by the devil but that Jacob was sick and needed medicine.