Category: Access to Care
HIV care for the poorest of the poor
So much better than just standing still
Hello
Another day in Paradise – although you’d be hard put to know it if you had just landed here from Mars. What makes this heady mix of mud, and joy, and neglect, and wild abandon into Paradise is so hard to describe.
Buckets of Mangoes
Preventing death in childbirth
This article is from the New York Times. Pregnancy and childbirth kill more than 536,000 women a year, more than half of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organization.
In April 2009, GAIA volunteer Rebecca Gerber brought an ultrasound machine to Mali. GAIA VF is Part of the Solution. We Take Action.
Silent Spring
While sitting at the Swearer Center Award ceremony at Brown this May 26th, watching my student Maddie Lorenzo accept her award for public service, I began to think about the young persons who were being celebrated at that event. I thought about their work, and the programs that they contributed to, and about what inner drive motivates these young people and their mentors contribute to public service. I thought about this as I watched the young people go accept their prizes with humility and grace – and heard more than one of them say – I did do not do this work to get this prize; I did this work because I believe in it.
Watching the happy proceedings, I began to think about the two types of people who get involved in work related to addressing health inequalities- the work that I am engaged in as a physician. These two types of people often end up at opposing ends of the engagement spectrum in terms of their contributions to ending health inequity, for reasons that are directly related to their own motivation for their engagement. One group is engaged in the struggle against health inequality because they live and breathe and identify with that struggle. They do this work to improve health for human bodies- because in that struggle, they see their own well-being -in other words, they see themselves as being part of that body for which they struggle.
How We Value a Life – Doctors’ Attitudes Make a Difference
I’ve been all over the world in the past few weeks. Mali, Paris, Toronto. You would think that the travel itself would be disorienting. But the distance from here to Mali hits me the strongest when I go take care of patients in my clinic in Providence. My ability to access tools and medications that make my HIV patients better has a profound effect on my actions. I know that I can prolong life, and even save lives, with a few simple interventions.
That knowledge and certitude contrasts sharply with the attitudes of doctors caring for patients who are dying from HIV and AIDS elsewhere in the world. Why does their attitude matter so much? The Global Fund and the Clinton and Gates foundations might make drugs available for HIV/AIDS, but it’s going to take a lot more to address the hopelessness that affects doctors and caregivers who are just learning about HIV and how to treat. They simply don’t believe that AIDS patients can live long lives. They don’t test, and treat, because they cannot see a future.