“My chest hurts severely and the pounding of my heart is relentless,” exclaimed a woman of forty whom I met in the emergency department. She proceeded to describe how she also felt fever and burning throughout her body, along with weakness of her legs and sensations of her head spinning. On exam, I indeed […]
The two-year old child in this photo presents to your health center in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Family members explain that eight months ago their farm was attacked by bandits. No one in the family, including this child named Aamir, has eaten regularly since then. What’s more, Aamir in recent days has
While HIV disease is relatively controlled in wealthier nations, the threat and suffering from HIV continues to be devastating throughout much of our world. One intriguing potential intervention for eliminating HIV from high endemic regions is know as “Test And Treat.” In short, this approach is to provide wide access to voluntary testing and
Child birth is both beautiful and dangerous. Well known and still tragically common are the direct causes of maternal deaths: hemorrhage, infections, obstructed labor, and hypertensive disorders in pregnancy. But there also exist birth-related disabilities; ones not causing death near the time of delivery, but leading to extended incapacity and suffering not only for
“Experiencing Zambia really changed my life!” Betsy Rogers is animated on her return after three weeks teaching Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) in southern Africa in association with Tiny People Matter. “We taught HBB in several settings. My favorite experience was teaching outside under trees with a slight breeze blowing, to village birth attendants for whom
Yesterday I was mentoring these Chinese family medicine resident physicians. During my presentation I suddenly sensed a shaking chill. The weather is extremely cold here in Shenyang, far NE China – about -10 degrees. So I attributed my chill to the walk outside. But then I was struck once more by that bone-rattling sensation,
“Yet another 9-year old with a coin stuck in the esophagus,” explains Steve Foster, INMED faculty physician in Angola, southern Africa. “I grabbed it with the biopsy forceps, and up came the coin worth maybe 6-7 cents… Then a laconic comment from an ER nurse, ‘Oh, there’s a guy here who can’t talk.’ That
Greg Shay is a mid-career pediatric pulmonologist embarking on a life-long dream: to promote the health of a marginalized community. He completed the INMED International Medicine & Public Health Hybrid Course this fall, and is now heading to the African nation of Cameroon with the organization Mission Doctors to serve at St Martin de
One of the most daunting challenges in clinical medicine is finding the cause of an acute febrile illness. The implications are significant. Some acute febrile infections are life-threatening, like meningitis or cerebral malaria, causing death within hours. Some are highly contagious; putting loved ones – family and friends – at greatest risk. And some
Yesterday was Rotary’s World Polio Day, and the temptation to draw a comparison with Ebola is compelling. Both diseases at times sparked intensive public fear: polio in the 1950s and 1960s; Ebola only recently. Both diseases are killers; polio about 250 so far in 2014 (some 10,000 in 1960); Ebola about 4,000. Both diseases