Thursday, July 21, 2011

Still in Shock



(This photo is of a Haitian man who came into the Cholera Treatment Center at Hopital Albert Schweitzer a couple of weeks ago. He was very weak from vomiting and diarrhea. I had just put a rubber glove on his right wrist to act as a tourniquet so I could insert an angiocath and give him IV fluids. All of a sudden he fell off the chair vomiting in front of me. This was not unusual in the admission room. jc)


From Crof's Blog:

Tracking all this misery has taught me something about how the world reacts: The darker the victims, the shorter the attention span of the white world. Problems like HIV, dengue, malaria, and cholera afflict untold millions of brown and black people. But let a few hundred Europeans suffer a violent E. coli infection, and the (white) industrial nations fly into a panic. Once they've blown a few hundred million euros in wasted cucumbers, they regain their composure.

Meanwhile, millions of brown and black children and adults die unnoticed in squalor and the smell of shit. As La Rochefoucauld cynically said, "We always find the strength to bear the misfortunes of others." And that ensures that the misfortunes will continue.

--Crawford Killian

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