Unprecedented numbers of health care professionals are volunteering their services in poorer nations. But their altruistic motives are often quickly tempered by the reality of novel and daunting questions connected with very limited resources, and further complicated by unfamiliar cultural context. For example: • Is it acceptable to diagnose a person’s hypertension, but […]
In the Disney-Pixar movie Wall-E, a tiny robot is left on Earth to clean up the trash remaining after humans have long departed. Wall-E’s existence consists of a mundane routine of sifting through lifeless rust, garbage and refuse. That is, until one day when he encounters for the first time a living plant, one
Since inception conception in 2003, INMED has enjoyed the opportunity to work with over 150 healthcare students, residents, and professionals to facilitating an international service-learning. While these are life changing experiences for most of these participants, INMED’s hope that they will also inspire career decisions that to serve the most marginalized of people. One INMED graduate
International medicine is a term that excites many health care professionals, often touching on dreams we experienced very early in our careers. But the term also has a variety of meanings to different individuals for nations, and communities within nations, are so varied in health status, health resources, and underlying culture and policy. As a
The days of winter are becoming darker, shorter, and colder. With them grows within us a sense of gloom. Bad financial news is rampant both at work and at home, causing us to sense an undercurrent of anxiety, even fear. Holidays are approaching, and we know we’re ‘supposed’ to be joyful, but we just
Attention to health concerns outside the United States continues to grow. Reasons commonly cited include economic globalization, worldwide news coverage, and the ease with which an epidemic in a distant land can now affect us within hours. There also exists a heartening sense of caring that motivates some individuals to respond with compassion and action
At this moment, Tropical Storm Hanna is closing in on North and South Carolina, while receding floodwaters in Haiti reveal the bodies of nearly 500 victims of this deadly weather system. Simultaneously, Hurricane Ike is over Cuba and aiming towards Texas. Just days ago Hurricane Gustav provoked evacuation of New Orleans. In the midst
Kelly Hankins is a medical student at University of North Carolina in the midst of her INMED service-learning at Kapuna Hospital in Papua New Guinea. “On my second day, a 13-year old boy came in with what was supposedly a two-week-old stingray injury-the tail had entered one side of his calf and come out
Giving medical care in Angola has it’s unique challenges: diseases rarely encountered in the US, very limited medications and equipment, staff who seem to disappear, and precious little in the way of laboratory or X-ray so I often never know for sure what I’m actually treating.But then there are remarkable advantages, too. Medical insurance
Four days ago I was summoned to the Kalukembe Hospital, 100 miles outside of the city of Lubango. Now Lubango has paved roads (some places), electricity, (sometimes), and running water (somedays). But in the outback of Kalukembe life has changed little in hundreds of years: simples houses built of dried adobe bricks, fields of