Medicine is Universal
Dr. Sriram Shamasunder in Haiti

Medicine is Universal

Dr. Pierre, Haitian ZL Leader teaching rounds in Hinche, Haiti with our fellow Robin Tittle.
Dr. Pierre, Haitian ZL Leader teaching rounds in Hinche, Haiti with our fellow Robin Tittle.

“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…)

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The Vital Need for Greater Technology in Global Health

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

This post is a question, an invitation and a challenge. How can we bring technologies we take for granted back home to those in the developing world? Many before me have spoken with outrage about the reality of two worlds; one of abundance, and the other where people live like they have in centuries past. The situation is more complicated since even poor people may have some technologies like cellphones now, but vital lifesaving technologies remain nowhere in sight. Some may argue that we still haven’t solved the dilemma of how to provide basic care on a global scale, but I believe that the two don’t need to be sequential. In actuality there are many scenarios in medicine where having a technology available is in fact necessary for the basic management of disease. We are doing our patients a disservice when they die from lack of access to a ventilator the same way as when they die from lack of access to an antibiotic. (more…)

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