Long Live The Sar

I've been trying to write a post on "The State of Medicine in Ethiopia" since my last blog post. A small topic. Needless to say I have failed to conjure any new ideas, synthesize my own feelings, or fully encapsulate my experience thus far (a full 11 days). Add to the mix the fact that I am currently sitting on the balcony of an apartment I rented in Dar Es Salaam for the weekend. Muhimbili Hospital in Dar Es Salaam started an ED Department and residency program 1-2 years before the Addis program started. Famous for building one of the continent's best ED departments and setting the standard for emergency medical care in East Africa, not to mention frequently training visiting residents from nearby countries such as Ethiopia and Mozambique, this program is amazing and further deepens/conflicts my feelings about Addis. But that's going to be its own post. Rather than delivering a treatise on healthcare in Addis today, I thought I'd simply share some of my re...

Tenastellegn Addis! Has it really been 6.5 years since I was last here? It must be because while so much of the city is comfortably recognizable, the daily reality of 2018 Addis is full of new surprises, challenges, and landscapes. In the summer of 2011 I had just finished my first year of medical school, was excited to show off my knowledge to my mentor, Rick Hodes, still couldn't tell the difference between a systolic or diastolic murmur (I think I finally can now?) and had only the slightest inkling of how much medicine I didn't know. Now, 78 months, 2 degrees, 83% of a residency, a marriage, and a dog later, I'm back. I will be in Addis from January 1-28, 2018 as part of Emory's Global Health Residency Scholars Program working with and learning from the Emergency Medicine residents at Addis Ababa University and Black Lion Hospital . For those worried that I am cockier than before, don't worry, I am now acutely aware of just how much medicine I still don...

It has been a few days since I last wrote because it has been an action packed six days. I'm now sitting in an internet cafe 125 km from Eritrea, along the palm tree lined streets of Axum. Rather than give a day-by-day accounting of my past week, I'll focus on the three highlights listed in the title of this post. Pediatric Rounds at Black Lion Last Thursday I spent the morning at Black Lion shadowing the pediatric residents and interns as they did rounds. When trying to set up a study on pediatric Hodgkin's Lymphoma, I emailed with a pediatrician at Black Lion, Dr. Haileyesus Adam. I met him during my previous visit to Black Lion and I was able to finally get him on the phone and finagled an invite to shadow. We started the day with coffee in the hospital's shai bet (which is really just a few tables in the main lobby with waitresses shuttling trays of macchiatos and juice). Dr. Haileyesus explained that there are no "specialists" among the pediatricia...

I haven't yet posted an update on my daily life this summer, so here's a brief summary of the past few days. Monday - I woke up Monday and had to move out of the JDC house where I've been staying into a hotel because the house was being fumigated for suspected bedbugs. I don't think we had any, but I wasn't the one getting bit so I can't say for sure. After breakfast, I went to the " Red Terror " Martyr Museum near Meskel Square. This new museum commemorates the 2 million people killed during the regime of the communist Derg (1974-1991) and the 500,000 killed between 1977-1978. The museum has many photos and some interesting points, but is unfortunately a little light on details and doesn't give enough background information. However, it's still relatively new (1 year), so I'll give it a break. My pseudo-tour guide was a nice middle-aged man who had actually been imprisoned for 8 years by the Derg, and he had shared a cell with one ...

I spent yesterday (Wednesday) at Black Lion Hospital, attending the resident's morning report and a guest lecture by an ENT physician from Phoenix, Arizona. The purpose of his talk was to introduce a neonatal hearing screening program that is being started at Black Lion and to explain its importance. The doctor donated a machine that detects otoacoustic emissions from the inner ear that are absent in people with hearing loss. (For extra credit: Does anyone have any theories as to why such a phenomenon even exists? It seems counterintuitive for the ear to produce its own sound). In the US, children who are identified with hearing loss are enrolled in early intervention programs that educate the parents in various forms of communication, such as sign language, beginning at six months; many children who experience this early intervention end up in normal school classrooms and communicate at a level on par with their normal-hearing peers. In the US, children with very severe hearing l...