Long Live The Sar

I've been meaning to write a post on this topic for a while, but it's a daunting subject. Expect revisions to come! To understand the practice of medicine in Ethiopia, you first have to understand the country's condition. My take - Ethiopia has been in the dark for the last 30 years and is now trying to match modern innovations with the old technology/infrastructure. This feeling is prevalent everywhere in the country, from the Mission, to the internet cafes, to the hospitals, and the banks. They build 10 story buildings, but the scaffolding is made from tree branches 20 feet long nailed together, not a single one thicker than my arm, and some as crooked as a question mark; it sways in the wind and it's amazing that it stands up at all. Internet cafes are everywhere with brand new computers, but internet no faster than 40 kbps (slower than old dial-up). Government officials drive brand new Cadillac Escalades but there are holes in the street 2 feet deep. MRI's...

are the ~5 euro volunteers helping or being destructive? tough to tell if you are being facetious. I don't know that they're being destructive, but I'm sure that their dressing skills, especially at the beginning were sub-par. I say this only because they didn't watch at all before jumping in and starting to touch multiple patients w/o changing gloves, not using new forceps for every patient, and other things of that nature. I'd imagine they're better now (I haven't spent much time watching them lately) ( update: They seem to be doing just fine and will be working at the mission for the next 6 weeks, so they'll be pros by the end) what are the international ngos that are helping fix the infrastructure problems? Don't know of a single NGO that is making a huge difference here, especially not in infrastructure ( update: Save the Children, UNESCO, USAID , and a few other NGO's are doing good work according to Rick) . The bureaucracy prevents a...

Unbelievable morning. It is mornings like today's when you think this country may have a future after all. As the European volunteers worked their magic in the dressing room again this morning, Zev , Jake, Abebe , and I decided to walk over to the nearby Yekatit 12 Hospital. The GW students had visited and highly recommended us meeting Dr. Thomas who runs the burn unit at the hospital, supposedly the most advanced burn unit in all of Africa. I haven't seen any other burn units, but regardless, Dr. Thomas is an unbelievable individual. What follows is his short biography, a synopsis of our visit, and the bits of information I remember clearly enough to put down here. Born in Ethiopia, Dr. Thomas did his medical training in Norway with additional training in India and Scotland. He is a trained plastic/reconstructive surgeon and built the burn unit @ Yekatit from the ground up. He has now trained 8 doctors from Ethiopia to work in/run similar units and has a competent nursing...

I haven't been doing too much work in the dressing room in the last 3 days because of the sudden presence of ~5 british/french/european volunteers. They have kind of taken over the dressing room (we won't discuss the new level of patient care) and so the last two days have been an interesting departure from the routine. Yesterday, Jake, Zev, Mekais (an Ethiopian starting his 2nd year @ Harvard Med), and I followed Dr. Germa on his rounds through the mission. His cases aren't as complicated as Rick's but he sees the more severe cases of some of the more unique diseases. A short list of the things we saw yesterday: ~Parkinson's ~Leprosy - as with everything else here, a text book example. ~An Abdominal Cyst that dominated the lower half of her abdominal cavity - It was so large such that looked pregnant, but b/c it was so large they were unable to find where it originated from in the ultrasound, maybe the ovaries ~Scabies ~A Leopold exam on a lady who was 30+ weeks pr...

The weekend was very relaxed with a busy morning @ the mission on Saturday. Saturday afternoon we (Jake, Zev, Berhanu, Ilana, and I) went to the Merkkato. A sprawling complex of stalls, shops, indoor "malls," and with more people than you can shake a stick at, it was a little overwhelming. The size of the area, the number of goods being traded, and the never-ending shouts of "hello" and "faranji" were enough to make one go insane. If I were to try and answer everything shouted at me, my head would surely fall off from the constant snapping side-to-side to answer everyone. In general, it was less like a market and more like too many stores crammed into pillboxes and stacked together. Two hours there was enough to make me want to go and sit in my hotel room for hours, simply so that no beggars, shoe-shine boys, vendors, or random people could bother me. So that was my saturday (topped off w/dinner in the hotel). The first item on the agenda for sunday...

Rick's son, Semegnew, and I after Shabbat dinner friday night. The improvised kippah's are a highlight.