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...

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...

A quick note about the hospital and its response to the outbreak: The Debre Berhan Referral Hospital is a compound of ~30 single-story buildings with nearly 115 beds. There are wards for medicine, pediatrics, surgery, and OB-GYN as well as an emergency department, an outpatient clinic, and an ophthalmology department. There are close to 10 senior physicians on staff and more GPs (General Practitioner – graduated 6 years of university/medical school but no further training) overseeing patient care. Dr. Aelaf and the GPs live on the hospital grounds in 15'x15' single rooms. We visit the hospital's shai bet (tea house) at least 3 times every day. As for the outbreak: Only a handful of people seemed to care about the fact that we were in the midst of dealing with an epidemic or that the patients were at serious risk of death if not managed correctly. The Chief Clinical Officer, a caring, well-intentioned physician, works hard to improve the hospital and often considers ...