Kind of a downer.

Death is such a regular occurrence here.  It's hard to really compare it, because people back home make it such a private affair. When people die in the hospital it's usually a subtle event, people are upset but in a more controlled way.  Here, there's an outburst of grief, people throwing their hands up to the skies, repeating certain phrases over and over, collapsing to the ground, screaming so loud that you can tell when there's been a death at the hospital even when you're at home in your living room.

Usually other parents crowd around the dead child, curiously, but most of the time the family members mourn alone, without other families trying to comfort them, like they all know its part of the process and not to interrupt it.  

This goes on for 30 minutes or so, then the family members - usually the mom - comes back inside the ward and dresses the child, which is a really intense process to watch. You can imagine her getting this child dressed every day, and now it's for the last time.  They usually softly mumble the same phrase they were yelling outside, almost like they're comforting their child.

It's just all so different.  At home, a team of doctors and nurses mobilizes at the bedside, CPR is usually started, the kid would maybe get intubated, they'd get a lot of IV medications to help restart their heart, possibly get shocked.  But here, we don't even have oxygen to give, let alone all the rescue meds, defibrillator, and ventilator.  So death is a much more natural process here, something you just have to accept, as terrible as it is.  And it's better not to dwell on whether they would have survived at a hospital in the 'western' world, because it's not the reality here.  Everyone tries to do the best with the limited resources that we have here, and hope that one day things will improve.