138. Takeo Seven: Pride

Given that Americans have made such incredible blunders under the banner of pride, let's give some slack to our hosts.  Often unwilling hosts.  Sure, local political and ecclesiastical leaders may ask us to come (well, maybe better said responded favorably to our requests to come), and perhaps hospital administrators as well, but the front line staff seem less eager to see us. Some may view us as adding to their already busy, poorly paid days.  More rooms to clean, instruments to sterilize, crowds to handle.  

And medical staff: do they ask our opinions on difficult cases, request lectures, or ask to watch surgery, to learn new techniques?  By and large, nope. At the end of the week, we heard (warning: second hand info here) that in a new wing of the hospital, there were new and better equipped operating rooms. That's okay, why should they suspend their schedules to give us free rein? The staff doctors didn't even know we were coming, the hospital administrators curiously keeping that to themselves.  Or maybe they did know, but said they didn't to justify their wariness.

And then there's Halothane.  Since Queen Victoria used ether during childbirth, anesthetic gasses have come a long way. Introduced in the 1950s, Halothane is cheap and has a positive side effect as a bronchodilator (relaxes airway muscles), but because it's slower (slower to sleep, slower to wake up), and because of rare cardiac complications, it is not even available in U.S. Cambodia, on the other hand prohibits the use of any anesthetic agent other than Halothane. This could be a pride issue--rather than admit it can't afford the other agents, the latter are simply outlawed--or it could be a reasonable attempt at cost control. Maybe something we could learn from. Darn it, there's that pride thing again.