What special skills are required of healthcare professionals who serve the most vulnerable people? The answer depends upon that particular needs of those people. Angola’s civil war, 1976 to 2002, was marked by famine that afflicted 2 million people. We who served in that era established re-nutrition centers for the profoundly malnourished. Osteomyelitis (bone […]
I enjoy highlighting the inspiring service of Steve Collins. Born in Angola in 1938, Dr. Collins returned twenty years ago, bringing along with him special training in ophthalmology. But even more than this, Dr. Collins carried with him a compelling desire to alleviate the needless blindness that afflicts a mass of humanity in this
I’m honored to introduce my Angolan medical colleagues: Piedoso and Alberto. They are among the very small number of national medical school graduates, and also among the tiny fraction of these who then choose to serve their low-income compatriots in settings like CEML Hospital. In 1989, when I first came to live Angola, my
This seven-year old boy arrived today at CEML Hospital from a rural village. Two weeks ago, his illness began with a toothache in the left upper mouth. Five days ago, puss began draining through the skin. This very disturbing photo, taken with permission, shows a black hole at the center of the left cheek.
“My son was playing with a coin and now it’s stuck in his throat!” explained a distraught father in the CEML Hospital emergency department. Objects lodged in the upper esophagus or trachea are especially deadly. They can quickly obstruct breathing or rupture into the neck, causing rapid sepsis and death. Gratefully, at that moment