Opinion: From Kigoma to Kyiv, refugees everywhere deserve quality health care

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/06/15/ [login to see] /opinion-from-kigoma-to-kyiv-refugees-everywhere-deserve-quality-health-care
At the Nyarugusu refugee camp in western Tanzania, a 39-year-old Congolese refugee and mother of nine came into our lives at what was almost the end of hers. She was bleeding to death from complications of childbirth.

We met this patient in April as part of a collaboration with the Tanzania Red Cross Society. As trainees in medicine and public health at Johns Hopkins University, we were visiting the camp to understand and improve the quality of its health care and surgical services.

The woman's baby had been safely delivered hours earlier, but she was very sick when she arrived at the camp's main hospital. She needed immediate surgical care, medication to maintain her blood pressure and urgent blood transfusions.

Exceeding our most optimistic expectations, the 39-year-old mother survived emergency surgery and recovered, despite very limited postoperative care.

Many other women are not as fortunate. Just days later, our Tanzanian colleagues reported that another woman had arrived with the very same condition. But she died.