Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Women of the World

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(Thanks to Claudia Coplan)

Giving You Drugs Won't Help Your Husband

“Are you not giving me any medicine?” her patient asked?

Ms. Shahab was silent for a moment, and then said with a sympathetic gaze, “Medicine for you will not cure your abusive husband.”

"The therapist was born in the isolated Afghan village she still lives in, in 1987 or 1988 — she is not sure. Her father was shot and killed at his mosque shortly before she was born. The reasons for the killing remain unclear, but it shattered their family and forever changed life for Ms. Shahab and her two siblings.

Ms. Shahab and Client (NY Times)

"A marriage was arranged to a man almost 20 years her senior when she was only 13. But the marriage did not stop her from completing her education. She took two of her youngest children with her to school, placing them at the kindergarten as she attended classes."

She is now a therapist in the village, caring for women battered by family and war.

This is an inspiring article:  Afghan Therapist Finds Empathy is Good Medicine.

 

Gambling with Your Life and Health

If you have questions about the value of screening (especially for breast and prostate cancer) here is a link to an important article by one of the most respected workers in the field.

You Have to Gamble on Your Health
by H. Gilbert Welch
NY Times, October 11, 2011

Mama Hawa, Courageous Somali Doctor

"On May 5, just after sunup, 750 militants surrounded Dr. Hawa Abdi’s hospital. Mama Hawa, as she is known, heard gunshots, looked out the window and saw she was vastly outnumbered.

“Why are you running this hospital?” the gunmen demanded. “You are old. And you are a woman!”

They did not seem to care that Mama Hawa, 63, was one of the only trained doctors for miles around, and that the clinic, school and feeding program she built on her land supported nearly 100,000 people, most of them desperate refugees from the fighting and poverty that has afflicted this nation.

The Saturday NY Times Profile (Jan. 6, 2011) "Under Siege in War-Torn Somalia, a Doctor Holds Her Ground."  Read article.  

Truck-Stop Girls

by  Catherine Maternowska

This fine essay appeared in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, August 23, 2009.  "In May, I was traveling down a South African highway with a colleague and a driver, headed toward Swaziland. A private foundation had assigned me to assess a health clinic that it set up for truckers and the girls and women who trade sex with them for cash and goods. Truckers are well known to transmit H.I.V. up and down the highways. And Swaziland, a small, landlocked country dependent on its busy trucking corridors, is particularly troublesome. It has the highest H.I.V. rate in the world: one in three people is infected..."  Full article "Truck-Stop Girls."