“In Haiti over eight days we saw 900 patients, treating infections and diarrhea. The people are desperately poor and were so very grateful for the medical care.” Anna, a family physician, spoke with enthusiasm. Then her voice turned somber. “But people also came to us with diabetes, asthma, and convulsions. We gave them a small […]
“In Haiti over eight days we saw 900 patients, treating infections and diarrhea. The people are desperately poor and were so very grateful for the medical care.“ This young physician spoke with enthusiasm. But then his voice turned somber, describing how the police arrived to investigate the credentials of their medical missions team. Practicing
“This woman is in labor, but the baby just will not descend!” Dr. Akua spoke anxiously and with good reason. He’d just graduated from medical school in Ghana and only yesterday joined me at the Baptist Medical Center in northern Ghana to begin his years of public service. We examined the lady, found her
Disasters and epidemic disease continue to mark this new century: Haiti’s earthquake, Pakistan’s flood, measles’ blight, and Zimbabwe’s cholera. The title waves in Japan last week are the most recent reminder of life’s vulnerability. The heartening response from many is to donate personal time, talent, and treasures to provide rescue and assistance to those
The seventeen-year old lady, Adriana, in this photo presents to the maternity ward at the Lubango Evangelical Medical Center in Angola, southern Africa. Her last menstrual period is unknown, but her uterus is full-term in size. She is in labor and shortly delivers a healthy infant, followed by delivery of her intact placenta.
As a resident physician I spent a summer in Burkina Faso – an impoverished nation in West Africa. For years a group of nurses with SIM (Serving In Mission) had been living on site, providing community health and clinic care in this remote, hot, and culturally distinct community. As I attended to ill patients,
The seven-year old girl, Maria, in this photo presents to you at the Clinical Evangelica Morava on the remote western coast of Honduras. Her parents explain that five days ago she suddenly developed fever, vomiting, severe headache, and pain on moving her eyes. Several other children in the neighborhood have been similarly ill since
One very early morning I heard a quite thump at the door. Opening it, I gazed out on to the little courtyard of my home in Huambo, Angola. Edwardo, a young pastor, stood clutching his four-year old son. The child was gasping and drooling, his little black body darker from cyanosis – insufficient oxygen.
As a kid, I noticed that my cousin Roger walked with a significant limp. He began wearing an elevated shoe to stabilize his gait. This was a result of polio he suffered in the 1950s – a time when the disease was rampant in the United States. Effective vaccines all but eliminated US polio
This child is going blind as a result of scaring to his cornea. Some 250,000 to 500,000 children in low-resource communities throughout Africa and the Indian subcontinent go blind each year from dietary deficiency of vitamin A. Severe deficiency causes irreversible corneal damage, leading to partial or total visual impairment. Startlingly, about half of