By: Ambereen Sleemi 

In January 2010, the small island of Haiti was devastated by a massive earthquake that hit the capital city of Port-au-Prince in the late afternoon of a busy workday. As the nation tried to grasp the scope of the tremendous loss of life and damage to infrastructure, another tragedy hit. This time, it was not the overt physical assault of the earth moving. It was the microscopic insidiousness of Vibrio cholerae the bacteria that causes cholera, spreading through the community at breakneck speed, ultimately infecting 1.2 percent of the population—over 700,000 individuals—and killing 8,700. Five years later, cholera is still a threat to Haiti’s most vulnerable populations, with over 10,000 new cases reported in the first three months of 2015. Although it is less deadly, it is now endemic—a fact of life in modern day Haiti, even though the country never before had a recorded cholera outbreak.

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By: Ambereen Sleemi

In Mendefera, Eritrea, I am part of a small team of visiting surgeons who work with and train local surgeons to care for women with severe maternal birth trauma. This trauma is almost always the result of lack of access to emergency obstetric care, primarily a cesarean delivery. The women we care for, like Elsa, who labored at home for two to three days before her family could bring her to the hospital, are mostly poor.

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