Emily's Worldview

In the New York Times today, there is an article about the overburdened emergency rooms, in New Orleans. It describes patients waiting for six hours to be seen, inadequate equipment, overburdened staff, and people being forced to travel to health facilities far away for non-life threatening emergencies like broken limbs.

It struck a chord with me because just this week I have been working on an essay about what it was like for my neighbor in Tanzania when he needed surgery. In short, it was exactly like that, and he was in an area of the country with relatively better health facilities than elsewhere, including one of the best hospitals in the country. Sometimes, here, we take health care for granted and marvel when it is not there for us. But for most people in most places it's never there to begin with.