The following excerpt is from a July 22, 2010 article published by Stanford University News. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
Children in Crisis: Stanford Researcher Blends Medicine, Politics to Improve Health of Guatemala’s Poorest
BY ADAM GORLICK
SAN JUAN EL MIRADOR, Guatemala – Dozens of children are heading into a metal-sided, one-room building in this tiny village overlooking Guatemala’s western highlands. On most days, this is the community school. But today is special. It’s a free health clinic, and the children are coming to see the American doctor.
Paul Wise, a pediatrics professor at the Stanford School of Medicine and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has medicine to settle their stomachs, help their breathing and stop their skin from itching.
Wise diagnoses ailment after ailment: Diarrhea. Pneumonia. Scabies. He doles out ointments, capsules and powders. Almost every child leaves with a bag of vitamins – something to help offset the malnutrition that’s stunted their development and left them too small for their three, four or five years…
…Politics are as necessary as medicine in places like this. That’s the premise behind Children in Crisis, a program created by Wise to blend Stanford’s expertise in medical research and international studies to provide health care to the world’s most vulnerable patients: children living in politically unstable regions.
“It’s not enough to make sure everybody is vaccinated, or that everyone who needs them gets vitamin supplements,” Wise says. “It’s about understanding and beginning to address the political requirements for the provision of these kinds of resources.” …read more
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