Medical Students Beyond Borders
By Bill Shore | April 10, 2007
Some of the work of Zachary Steinberg and Jeremy Berman, founders of Students for International Medical Action (SIMA), has been recounted in a recent post on Sharing Witness. They recently met with the Share Our Strength staff to report on their experiences bearing witness to the medical care crisis in Ethiopia.
Most Americans are surprised to learn that Ethiopia has a population of more than 73 million. What is really shocking is that there are only 108 surgeons in the country and 15 anesthesiologists! Zach and Jeremy founded SIMA both to fill an immediate treatment gap at overcrowded medical clinics and to inspire a future generation of American doctors who will act vigorously against declining medical conditions in impoverished countries.
In the course of taking larger and larger groups of medical students to Addis Ababa and Gondor they found that Ethiopian hospitals have little or none of the most basic medical tools that we take for granted: ventilation, labs, emergency medicine departments, pain care drugs like morphine, and diagnostic equipment like CT scanners. There is also a great shortage of doctors. While Ethiopia produces plenty of very good physicians, many leave. Today there are more Ethiopian doctors in Chicago than there are in Ethiopia.
As they showed slides of procedures they had performed there was no question that they were already saving lives. Zach Steinberg acknowledged that their work is a drop in the bucket; "no, a drop in the ocean." But the leaders of SIMA believe there is great leverage in working with the major teaching university in Ethiopia and that has become their focus and their strategy for influencing wider and wider circles of medical professionals there.
Typically Share Our Strength grants cover the operations of established anti-hunger organizations. Investing in a start-up health care organization was something new, and arguably "off strategy." But the impact SIMA is already having in improving the practice of medicine in part of Africa is a great reminder that there are times we must take risks - and even go off strategy - to invest in entrepreneurs and future leaders whose vision and determination we trust.