Surviving Bacterial Infection In An Isolated Area

I studied in a nursing school and we had to go to rural areas for outreach programs a lot. One particular case was an elder man who was in the middle of nowhere literally; has a house at least 3 hours from the nearest community, and the path towards his home through the mountains was barely visible because they have been used so little by the people. He had his own fruit trees and coffee plants, he has a water pump, and he trades some of the fruit to the nearby communities for his other needs. All in all, it's not a bad way to live since the view from his place was spectacular. Problem was he had a bacterial infection for a while in a wound that he was too stubborn to get checked; there was no electricity since he was so far from the community, and there's basically no phone signal too so no phones.

In the end we convinced him to get treatment at the province's closest hospital because there were already signs of massive infection and sepsis, and he wouldn't last much longer. He claimed that he was using medicinal herbs that can help with the wound, but it wasn't enough. He survived though, but if we hadn't convinced him, he would probably have died in a few months, if not weeks.

 

One of the primary causes of bacterial infection when traveling in an isolated area is contaminated water. Travelers seem to drink water straight from the sources such ponds, springs, rivers, streams etc. Chances of contamination in running eater is less, but the water in lake or pond is very polluted. If you make sure to boil before you drink, you can avoid bacterial infection.

 

I agree with you Vinaya drinking dirty water is one of the causes and boiling it to 100 degrees can help to kill bacteria in the water and I just wonder how he was able to last that long because actually bacterial produces quickly and they make people ill, I can imagine him in that isolated area using herbs which is never enough because they are not really effective! Anyway another way to avoid infection diseases for travelers is to take food precautions, for example don't buy foods from street vendors because you don't really know how he prepared it and how hygienic it is.

 

Some fairly common products and foods can be used to help kill bacterial infections when you are too far from a treatment facility. One of the best ones, and what my mother always used to use anytime that I had a cut of some kind, was plain old iodine. It is anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and antiseptic, so it can be applied to any open wound or sore, and will usually kill any bacteria that is causing infection.
Alcohol can also be used, and even drinking alcohol (such as whiskey) was commonly used to treat wounds in bygone years, at least here in the United States.
Another (lesser known) treatment is to put raw honey on the sore, and honey will actually kill any bacteria and draw out the infection. I once had a horse that had a bad cut on his fetlock, and the medicine that the vet gave me just was not helping a lot, and somewhere I learned about using honey.
The next time that I cleaned the wound, I smeared honey on it, and then wrapped it with a fresh bandage. Then next time that I looked at it, the whole bandage was covered with greenish pus where the honey had drawn out the infection, and I kept using it until the cut healed up completely.

 

I know that jungle aficionados who intend to spend extended periods of time in the jungle and away from humanity tend to carry some broad spectrum antibiotics with them (the penicillin variety). You could give the old man a course of antibiotics to keep, just in case. Also, crushed/chewed garlic is a potent antibiotic --although putting it on open wounds would be extremely painful.

 

Even though some herbal remedies are very good, I think the potency of conventional meds will win almost every time. The problem is that with the conventional drugs there are often side effects that are unintended that go along with the problem they are treating. It is sometimes using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito.