Robert M. Wachter recently joined the Global Health Core on a trip to Haiti to experience first-hand the Core's efforts to provide quality care across borders. Dr. Wachter is Professor and Associate Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Ryan Greysen & Phuoc Le, members of the Global Health Core at UCSF, were recently featured in the “Human Capital Blog” by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Ryan Greysen, MD, MHS, is an Assistant Clinical Professor conducting research incorporating technology for quality improvement. Phuoc Le, MD, MPH, serves as an Assistant Clinical Professor in medicine & pediatrics and leads the Global Health Pathway in Pediatric Residency. He is the Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Global Health Core.
“Medicine is universal.”
This is a phrase that Dr. Pierre, one of my Haitian colleagues here in Hinche, uses frequently. What he means is that medical conditions and the treatments they require do not actually differ between a low resource setting like central Haiti and a hospital like University of California, San Francisco. Of course, some diagnoses here (malaria, leptospirosis, cholera) are rarely encountered on the wards of American hospitals. In addition, we must remember that illness is often shaped by political, social, and economic inequities. But the fundamentals of disease are the same; the human body doesn’t know that it was born across the border. (more…)