Guilt complex of the privileged

I wish I had photos to upload, to show you what I´ve seen in these past few days. I suppose words will have to do.

Being in Iquitos makes me so homesick. It´s no Singapore, but it feels like I´m back in South East Asia. It´s a mixture of Bali, Pnom Penh, Railey and Puli – chaotic traffic jams of tuktuk motorcars, children wandering barefoot, and carts of the most beautiful and bizarre tropical fruits I have ever seen. But during the day we visit the local slums, with ana rea called Belen being particularly harrowing.

Imagine a neighborhood where the pavement is made not out of concrete but mud and rotting trash, where a parasite infected river to simultaneously be your source of drinking water and toilet. In the clinic, we get kids that shit worms that are 5 inches long and then vomit them from the other end. That´s Belen.

Coming from a family split across three continents, with holidays in Europe or Australia, the idea that you´re never going to get the chance to escape is completely foreign to me. I hear people say “how horrible, how sad” but I don´t understand. How they can be sympathetic when they don´t know what their life is like? I mean I´m looking, I can see the way they live, but I can´t even begin to pretend that I know it´s like to live amongst garbage and feces. These people are really homing in the fact that I am a privileged and spoiled brat.

But I think the sympathy is useless. The Iquitos people are intelligent with a government that is trying to provide for them. In theory everyone has national insurance with access to health care. What they lack are funds. Yes, there are doctors, nurses, equipment and hospitals, but for most people there is simply no money to spend. No soles for even a saline drip or sterile gauze, let alone the money to get from Iquitos to Lima where all the specialised care is. People complain about having to take a 30 minute bus ride to their gynaecologist. Here, your gynaecologist, your urologist, any specialist, any surgeon is a 10 hour boat ride away.

So I say bullshit to all the sympathetic comments, bullshit to all the sad faces we pull at the kid missing a leg. Pick up that box of supplies and carry it to the truck, and work just a little bit faster, a little bit harder to see more patients. If we´re not going to give them cash, then the very least we can do is make use of this life-saving (albeit basic) clinical knowledge we´ve been passed on. This is how we, as doctors in waiting, can make a difference. Well... that´s the most I can hope.