Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Africa

  • Blood donation in South Sudan

    Ahmed ElhagLatham, New York, United States When discussing the many challenges surrounding blood donation in South Sudan people tend to focus primarily on infrastructural barriers such as limited health care facilities and lack of investment and medical supplies. However, one important barrier that is often overlooked is the cultural stigma around blood donations. Many people…

  • Ebola on this side

    Elisabeth Preston-HsuAtlanta, Georgia, United States In September 2014, my husband Chris boarded a plane from Atlanta, Georgia for the Democratic Republic of Congo, his first trip to Africa for work. We had just moved back to Atlanta two months before when he started a new career with the Centers for Disease Control. He would spend…

  • The mysterious Red Cross boy

    Emeka Chibuikem V.Enugu State, Nigeria Who is this Red Cross Boy? This is the question to which I could find no answer until this day. I am Alex, from the Igbo tribe in the South-East of Nigeria, and I was born out of wedlock in 1991 to a single mother who died in 1998, while…

  • Bad blood

    Andrea DejeanToulouse, France The French Blood Agency (l’Établissement français du sang; EFS) organizes frequent blood collection campaigns in the small city where I live in southwestern France. These campaigns are often planned to take place before the start of school vacations or just before the end-of-the-year holiday season when many French families take to the…

  • Quinine and the cinchona plant: Gain or bane for Africa?

    Lom NingBamenda, Republic of Cameroon “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds than all doctors in the Empire.”1 This statement by Winston Churchill referred to the bitter-tasting substance in tonic water, quinine. This antimalarial alkaloid did save lives, but also propelled the economy and prestige of the British Empire as it…

  • Health care in Nigeria

    Obinna Ejide Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria A brilliant young student at the University of Calabar in Cross Rivers State, Nigeria, died recently during a strike of the doctors at the university teaching hospital. This is not the first time that such an incident has occurred in Nigeria. In September 2017 a pregnant woman died…

  • Hastings Banda: Family doctor turned tyrant

    In his 1936 list of Truants in medicine who “deserted medicine” and yet perhaps to his surprise or condescension “triumphed,” Lord Moynihan of Leeds listed mainly successful men of science or letters. Actors and sportsmen, however famous, were not included. But mentioned were several people who “strayed to politics,” notably Clemenceau, Sun Yat Sen, and…

  • Nothing prepares you for this

    Anne RooneyOak Park, Illinois, United States There are never enough beds. Seventy women lie side by side on the floor of a hospital ward intended for thirty patients. Some sleep on torn brown blankets on the cement floor. Those lucky enough to have a bed have neither sheets nor a pillow, only a wafer thin…

  • A change in mindset

    Asayya ImayaLondon, United Kingdom “This is witchcraft,” my father said with authority. I had questions that I dared not ask; my father was a formidable and austere character. The terror he had instilled in me as a child was still palpable, and I still feared him as an adult. I am not sure I liked…

  • The hidden history of Lomidine

    Sophia NewmanChicago, Illinois, United States The shot against sleeping sickness brought me so many problemsThe shot against sleeping sickness hurt me so…They pricked me in the back…And still, they want to send me to draw waterIf I try to slow my stepThe policeman hits me on the head with a stick.1 This song, originally sung…