This summer our three-year-old daughter had her tonsils and adenoids removed. Many children have this routine surgery, but we still teared-up a bit as they wheeled her away. Then we enjoyed our coffee while we waited for the surgeon to tell us everything went “just fine.” Because we knew it would be. Even if there was a complication we rest assured in the fact that we were in the United States.
This summer Mama Youyou, our nanny in Congo, also had a routine surgery and we were scared out of our minds. Mama Youyou waited to have her surgery until we left for our summer break in the States so she wouldn’t have to take off work. (Bless her.) When she told us she needed the surgery, we did everything we could to make sure she had access to good health care.
You see, Mama Youyou has already outlived her life expectancy as a Congolese woman. Complications during routine surgeries in DRC, and lack of access to medical care, are the type of thing that keeps her life expectancy rate down.
In the weeks before we left, she started saying things like, “If it’s my time, it’s my time…” And she told me that helping her find the best doctor was pointless because her fate was “in God’s hands.” But we still did what we could. We asked around for the best doctor and searched for someone who could stay at the hospital and take care of her during her recovery. In Congo you have to provide your own food and care in the hospital.
Up until the day we left for the States, Mama Youyou had been her usual stoic self. She’s always very Mary Poppins-esque when she says goodbye for our summer break. No tears. No fuss. But this time she hugged us tight and sobbed. She really believed it would be the last time she would see us.
Fast forward a week or so later and a friend emailed us say Mama Youyou had her surgery and was recovering. Then he sent us photos of the surgery itself (!) with the operating table right next to an open window. He also sent this picture of Mama Youyou and her friend who took care of her in the hospital.
During that same week, here is an image of my daughter in her American hospital:
I was gutted by the difference. Besides my daughter’s balanced meal, all the ice cream she can eat, fancy bed with room for me to sleep beside her, and sterile IVs, there’s really just one difference. Access.
My daughter and Mama Youyou spend their lives together. They sing the same songs, read the same books, laugh at the same jokes. But when they are sick, one has a very good chance of dying and the other has every chance of living. Of course I know this is how it goes, but there’s nothing like a photo to make me feel every adjective for the word sad.
When we got back to Congo, Mama Youyou was out of the hospital and on the mend. Who knows if anything we did made a difference. She said her hospital experience was miserable and I could use the picture above to tell about it. Because if I’m all kinds of sad, she’s all kinds of emotions. The difference is that she was born a woman in Congo. And her whole life she’s known that life isn’t a given.
What does a typical hospital stay look like in your part of the world? Are there big health disparities where you live?
This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Sarah. You can find Sarah blogging with Jill Humphrey at Mama Congo.
Photo credit to the author.
Wow – this story brought tears to my eyes … God Bless Mama Youyou indeed!
I live in Cape Town which is in the only province of South Africa run by the Democratic Alliance (DA) and not the ANC (the ruling party). I usually steer well clear of politics, but South Africans have just about reached the end of their tether after 20 years of “free and fair” elections and broken promises. Unfortunately it’s the very same people that the ANC promised to help, that are suffering the most due to corruption, mismanagement and outright theft of taxpayers money. On Sunday there was a report on the shocking Healthcare situation in Limpopo (one of the poorest provinces). A woman only managed to get someone to check the progress of her pregnancy when she was 6 months along. She got told that her baby was dead and given 2 tablets to “get the baby out” – NO counselling or even basic information about what was going to happen to her!! That night she went into labour but there was no bed or assistance available to her. I don’t want to go into the gruesome details of what this poor woman went through, but as soon as the placenta was delivered she was sent home!! This was her first pregnancy and she is still too traumatized (months later) to even consider trying to conceive again! 🙁
I can’t help contrasting that with the care that (for example) a friend of mine received at Groote Schuur Hospital, or the care given to children at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital (which is rated the best pediatric hospital on the continent)!
Of course, if you can afford it, we have Private Hospitals which are state-of-the-art. Everyone expects a disparity between the State-run hospitals and the Private ones. What (for me at least) is harder to swallow, is that if you happen to live in Limpopo instead of the Western Cape, you basically have “Congo-like” hospital care(IF YOU ARE LUCKY!) but if you live in the Western Cape you have access to the kind of care you would expect in a First World Country! 🙁
These global disparities in health care are one of the biggest travesties I can think of. I’m glad Youyou at least had someone there by her side and a good outcome! And the problem is not just access to a health facility but also the quality of the care. I know many women who are not deterred so much by the cost and distance to care but by the expectation of poor or even unkind treatment.
I just had my child in a Nairobi hospital (one of the best in the region). It was a heart-breaking experience but even then I (like you) could feel confident that once we got there he would get the help he needed. I can’t imagine not having that certainty on top of all of the heartache of a sick child. There’s so much we’re insulated from living in the rich world. Thanks for bringing such a powerful story to this sad global dynamic!
What a moving story Sarah! Living in NYC, we are spoiled by all of the great medical care we have at our finger tips. When I had my children I had a choice of several amazing hospitals. There is a disparity, in smaller towns away from the big cities, or in the less fortunate sections of the larger cities, but no matter what hospital you are admitted to, you will receive proper medical care and food. The problem that we face here is that medical insurance is expensive, and when we leave the hospital there are usually many bills to pay.
Sarah — thank you for raising this topic! I was in the hospital last week with my daughter, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how lucky we were to have access to great health care. Everyone deserves this. I’m so glad that Mama Youyou is doing well. Please send her my love!
Jen 🙂
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.~
He was right when he said it in 1966…and sadly it is still true today 🙁