No escape from the night stalker

In the cyber world, there is no escape. Switch it off, or go to a place without it. A desert island somewhere?

No can do. News follows me like a stalker in the night.

A fine young missionary doctor, admired for his emphasis on preventative health education in rural communities without access to drugs and conventional treatment, has died after a car crash in eastern Zimbabwe. He was a passenger in the car.

But the worst of it: the intensive care unit at the nearest provincial hospital wasn’t up and running, the government’s bragged-about air ambulances from Russia weren’t available and the runway lights at Mutare airport weren’t working for a private plane to airlift him to Harare for resuscitation.

It’s yet another tragedy that speaks to the terrifying state of health services where scores of the sick and injured die needlessly every day. More will die without Dr. Mthabisi Nembaware in the Honde Valley.

Several of the bright yellow helicopters were the first arrive from Russia earlier in the year, with more promised. The official braggarts said they were for emergency medical air rescue first and foremost and for aerial policing and security priorities. Where are they?

Leaders, in luxury cars with flashy, siren-wailing motorcades, don’t care to see the gravely sick being taken to distant and ill-equipped rural clinics on wheelbarrows and donkey-drawn carts. When they get ill, they fly abroad for care.

If you are not outraged, you are out there on a self-crafted desert island.

Or, as is the case the world over, you are not paying attention to horrific realities in far away places. Why should you? You have your own chronic inequalities to contend with..

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