I spoke about foreigners and relative attitudes between them and myself. But, truth be told, one of the reasons they think they are in deepest darkest Africa when they are here is because they are!!!
We pick up the story roughly where I left it off. The initial accident claimed two lives. Then the young son has to survive a brain bleed and a neck fracture. Somehow the neourosurgeon sorts all that out. Then in ICU he gets acalculous cholecystitis and I meet him, almost in exitus. We fetch him from the pearly gates and tie him up in ICU for a while. He survives. He can walk. His maths and science still works. Miraculous!
But for a moment imagine the father, the only one not really injured in the accident. He is in a foreign country. He has just lost 50% of his family and there is a real chance his son might die or be paralysed or retarded for life. The daily ICU vigil alone must have taken a toll on him. And then things slowly start improving.
After too long away from home they are ready to leave. The son is amazingly well. He is neither paralysed nor retarded. Also he is alive which everyone sees as a positive thing. Then they have the unpleasant task of getting the bodies of the other two members of the family. What do they find? Certain body parts are missing, including one hand!!! Stolen from the dead in the morgue. You just can’t make this sort of thing up. I dare you to try.
I have spoken before about body parts stolen to be used by sangomas for so called traditional medicine, so I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked, but I was. I couldn’t help feeling for him. Over and above all the terrible things that happened to this man and his family he has to endure the bodies of his departed family being desecrated.
This story so affected me I followed it in the local papers for a while and pretty much put it together. At least some of the people were actually arrested so quite a lot of the story became public. It seems there were people working in the morgue who regularly stole body parts to sell to sangomas. They would target the bodies which were to be cremated and cut out the desired organs just before cremation. No one would be the wiser. The foreigners were targeted, it seems, because the body lay in the morgue so long while the boy recovered in hospital.
So, in conclusion, this is deepest darkest Africa and here you will truly be amongst us savages.
Boy if that statement doesn’t hit the nail on the head.
Talking to Cortese this week, I heard two themes that cut to the heart of the debate. First, he thinks Obama has made a mistake in moving toward the narrower goal of “health insurance reform” when what the country truly needs is health system reform. Imposing a mandate for universal insurance will only make things worse if we don’t change the process so that it becomes more efficient and less costly. The system we have is gradually bankrupting the country; expanding that system without changing the internal dynamics is folly.
Let me give you the truth of our current reality. We as a nation are headed for a devastating bankruptcy at the hands of our current health insurance model. A model that pays for everything (of substance) and passes on those costs to current and future generations.
Obama’s push for health insurance reform will do nothing to save America’s model that pays for everything (of substance) and passes on those costs to current and future generations.
The argument, as I see it, is not that a lack of insurance is bankrupting our country, but rather the model of insurance itself. Getting more of the same won’t make health care less expensive, it will make it more expensive. And ultimately, if we keep paying for things the way we pay for things now, there won’t be any money left for anyone.
Some people argue that spending money now with universal access will create a healthier and cheaper to insure America. To that, all I have to say is look to the history of the last 50 years. Medicare did not make health care cheaper. It has, for the last 50 years lead to a devastating economic death spiral. FREE=MORE is bankrupting our country. The model of insurance is bankrupting our country. The storm on the horizon will be the death of America, unless something changes, and soon.
I think the whole current nonsense debate is a travesty both from the Republicans and the Democrats. Opponents and proponents are both focusing on the wrong issues at hand. The issue is cost. If you can’t control costs, nothing else matters.
Doctors every where should embrace a system of delivery that encourages value and quality. The ones that will fight you tooth and nail are the ones that are ripping off America with their pretend care. The bad ones will suffer as will.
The physicians most expensive procedure is the pen. If doctors can’t lead the way toward cost effective care, then they should get out of the way while others do. Because if we as physicians don’t do something, we will have spent all the Treasury’s money for all future generations. And we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
Thanks again to Are You A Doctor for pointing me to this article.
The first statistic that shocked me was that the average intake of added sugar is 17% of our daily calories per day. This is added sugar, meaning it doesn’t count the sugar found naturally in fruit and milk, but rather just the sugars added to the foods we consume. 17% of our calories?!?!? That is a lot, in my opinion. It is not a secret that I have a sweet tooth especially when it comes to chocolate, but the sweets do not add up to almost 20% of my calories for the day!
The study broke down race/ethnicity, education, and income to see how these factors influenced how much sugar they ate. Check out some of the findings:
As education level and family income increased, sugar intake was lower
Asian Americans then Hispanics had the lowest intakes
Black men were highest among men
Trying to identify added sugars? Look for these terms:
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