So once again, it has been forever since I’ve written. So much going on. So much to do. An endless task. Sisyphean is this work. Month 6 and I will admit I am both encouraged and discouraged. There are changes in care. Small ones. There are children who live as a consequence of therapeutic milk given to advance them quickly from a state of severe malnutrition to an improved state which is more viable to life. We do that. We give antibiotics that didn’t exist here before, a) because there were no paid staff in this part of Rwanda to give them, b) there was not enough money provided by the government to buy the medicines they needed even if they had had well trained Rwandan doctors out here. They had neither. So most everyone in those circumstances around here just died. That’s why they are so grateful to the doctors for their care. Yesterday there was a large ceremony to thank one of the PIH doctors for saving his life. Dr. Henry (as patients call him here) put him on ARV’s and TB meds and although he came in like all the rest of them, on deaths door, an unimaginably low weight, wasted, dysentery, fevers, infections, cough, dying, he was HIV+ and once on meds, well, now, he is throwing a party for Dr. Henry, giving him his best cow. And the whole village was there. To celebrate. Love they said. That this is a love cow was how it was translated to us. For what Henry did. Because prior to Henry being out here, this man said in his toast, he knows he would have died. And the poignant truth is, he would have. Without ARV’s, without someone here to do the tests and run them, and send them to Kigali to find out what the CD4 count is in order to better assess where the person is. To treat other opportunistic infections that come along the way as a result of the process, well trained docs can take care of this kind of patient, and actually create a life for this person, their health will return.
That is the hero side of this work. That is the side where a presence of intelligent individuals who have had the opportunity of education and resources, can come here, and truly see the power of their contribution. It is not something that should give anyone a big ego, but I also think the importance of that contribution should be acknowledged. It is medicine and treatment and docs and supervision, one patient at a time.
I do wonder if one day people will look back on the turn of the century, 1990-2050 and we will seem antiquated and barbaric to the future. They will look back on us and they will see not Tuskeegee Syphilis Trial, or using prisoners for medical experiments as the barbaric inhumane things we see them as now, but they will look back and see countries ignoring all these poverty stricken places and for all intents and purposes, turning their backs. And I wonder if in the future, turning backs on the world’s dying will be seen as just as crude and inhumane as medical experiments on prisoners. Or torturing animals. Ignoring will be just as bad as killing.
I do think these areas can be helped. I do believe that the local governments need to be a part of this decision making process of how to improve health care, and agriculture and economies. As painful as that may be for people who are used to areas with quicker internet connections and more consistent electricity and a history of well run democracies. I see it as an essential contribution we have to make to humanity now.
But I will admit, the work does get tiring. It is one small drop at a time. And you look at what’s on your plate, and although there are patients celebrating doctors by giving their best and only cow, there are other times that are seemingly hopeless. If those with more resources both within this country and outside of it, don’t start pitching in, the world at large will be in trouble. It’s the rich people and companies who are not concerned about contributing to the solutions that I think just don’t see this. I feel like, give me two days, with any one of these people who would rather live a life of money and I will show them the importance of living a life with a sense of message.
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