Worse than usual at KCH

Nobody tells you how much harder it is to be a doctor in this setting than a non-doctor (or a pre-doctor). Honestly, it is a privileged prospective to have, one that most people do not even know to consider. I did not.

30 October 2013 page 1

30 October 2013 page 2

I came to Malawi with the same luggage, on the same long plane ride, driven by the same belief in justice that had brought me across the ocean into emergency rooms and charity hospitals in the past. However, it wasn’t until I stood inside Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) pediatric wards, surrounded by critically ill children crowded onto dirty beds and searched desperately for the last vial of a beta agonist for a 6 year old with asthma and begged a busy nurse to help me hang blood for another child who had been waiting for more than 36 hours for a transfusion that I realized this time was different. I am a doctor now. The difference is one of not being able to do anything to being acutely aware of all that it is that I cannot do.

31 October 2013 article 1

31 October 2013 article 2

Since I have been at KCH, I’ve seen more death than in my entire medical career and, worse, have felt dependent on luck alone to get a sick child stabilized and treated. We have been without everything from gauze to epinephrine to xrays. The drug shortages leave me with little to offer, the human resource shortages make it impossible to care for every patient, and the supply shortages mean that even surgeons, who have a special gift of immediate healing, cannot operate.

1 November 2013 

KCH, in Lilongwe, Malawi one of the most aid heavy cities in the world, is not necessarily suffering from financial limitations, but organizational and bureaucracy issues. The only comforting thing about KCH staff being “Irked” (understatement) and protesting is that I know that the current state of the hospital is particularly bad, even for KCH.

1 November 2013 Letter