Hi, this is Clark, and I’d like to share the story behind this photograph. 

Like every good emergency, it came to a head at 2 AM.

I was inexperienced and nervous, having been at Tenwek Hospital for only two weeks.  A baby came in and was clearly suffering from critically high bilirubin levels – his skin was yellow from head to toe; he was stiff with an arched back and a shrill, uncomfortable cry.  The bilirubin was poisoning his brain with damage accumulating every passing minute. 

At this point, his only treatment option was a double exchange transfusion – take all his blood out, replace it with donor blood, repeat. 

One problem – I’d never done one.  I’d never seen one done. In the US we have access to good quality blue-light phototherapy, which brings down the bilirubin levels before they get to this point. 

Thankfully, you can learn a lot of things from the internet these days.

By the grace of God, the procedure worked.  But although the baby lived, he had permanent brain injury. 

Over the next year, I saw this story play out again and again.  Babies in our community could not access effective phototherapy.  When I finally got a meter to measure phototherapy intensity at Tenwek, I discovered that we were delivering less effective therapy than sunlight. They units turned on, but it may have been better if they had not. We had a false sense of security that we were doing something.

Commercial phototherapy units were expensive and often poorly maintained, costing over a thousand dollars at initial purchase and frequently requiring replacement bulbs several times a year.

So, we built our own. Our units cost around $40 each and they have been going strong for five years. Since building them, we have seen a dramatic change in outcomes at Tenwek.

Our circumstance was not unique. Unfortunately, it’s still the situation at other hospitals in our community and much of the developing world. While we can’t go back in time and change the outcome for that baby boy we treated six years ago, we can do something about the next one. 

Around 100,000 babies die worldwide each year due to lack of access to phototherapy.  If this is something you’d like to help change, share the video and consider giving.  We’re sending out our first hundred phototherapy kits to fifty different resource-limited hospitals around the world. I’m asking for your help to raise the next $100,000 to ramp up production and distribution.  Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

Watch Let There Be Light for more information.

Thank you, and may God bless you.

Clark Sleeth

To give:

Send check to:

10 Talents Foundation 501c3
Memo: Giving Tree Babylight Project

Addressed to: Giving Tree, 6893 Emerald Bay Loop, Shreveport LA 71107

Give online at:

https://wgm.org/project/pediatric-projects-and-equipment

to designate your gift for this project click “+Add instructions to the finance office” and enter “LIGHT”

Use this link to share the video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v20OjHJDcA99A6vvOh8wZ2mSrVAu_6rW/preview

Hannah, Simon, Clark, Luke, and Val Sleeth

I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people;

No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.

No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days,

For the young man shall die a hundred years old…

Isaiah 65: 20