Archive for the ‘2012 Angola’ Category

How Would You Treat This? – Angola Day 24

Friday, July 27th, 2012 |

  The photo above is the upper tibia of Ezekiel - the mature man about whom I wrote on Angola Day 23. The black cavity is the space from where four days earlier we excised the necrotic bone of osteomyelitis. What's ...

Life On His Knees – Angola Day 20

Monday, July 23rd, 2012 |

  Emergency patients I saw today at Hospital Cristo Rei: a lady five months pregnant with interuterine fetal demise - very sad, an elderly man with starvation and end stage tuberculosis barely breathing, a fellow my age with a sudden stroke ...

Helping Babies Breathe – Angola Day 17

Friday, July 20th, 2012 |

  What's the most vulnerable minute in person's entire life? The very first minute following birth. During those few seconds the baby must transition from receiving oxygen from the mother via umbilical cord to clearing its own airways, starting respiration, and ...

Advantages of Leprosy? – Angola Day 15

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012 |

  Today I was making inpatient rounds at Hospital Cristo Rei when I overheard, "I'm so glad God allowed me to contract leprosy, because it's only here in treatment that I learned about Jesus. All those 'healthy' people in my town ...

Greatest Killer Of Children? – Angola Day 11

Saturday, July 14th, 2012 |

  Maria, the eight-month old in this photo, has been coughing for two weeks. She arrived here at Hospital Cristo Rei on the same day as I. Maria was breathing heavily, coughing constantly, and her chest demonstrated every sign of pneumonia. ...

Orthopedics In The Rough – Angola Day 9

Thursday, July 12th, 2012 |

  Senhor Eduardo was riding his tiny motor cycle down one of Angola's "unimproved" roads when he struck a pot hole and landed on a boulder. What results was the injury in this X-ray above. Most concerning is that this fracture ...

Restoring Vision – Angola Day 8

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012 |

  Looks like a modern eye center in North America, doesn't it? Actually, I took this photo today in Benguela, Angola - home of the Boa Vista Eye Center. Boa Vista was launched in about 1994 by my Swiss colleague for ...

Making Money Instead Of War – Angola Day 5

Sunday, July 8th, 2012 |

  My first two years living in Angola were in the midst of this nation's civil war, which started in 1961 and escalated in 1974. A prototypical "Blood Diamonds War," it was financed primarily by sale of oil and gems. A ...

Are You Pursuing A Calling?

Sunday, July 1st, 2012 |

  You struggled for years through undergrad and graduate school. You muscled past hundreds of exams and shouldered enormous financial debt. You endured in spite of taunting from your peers and self-doubt from within. You crossed the finish line with a ...