As an adoptive parent and physician, I have started this blog in the hopes of stirring up interest and discussion on the topic of health care in Ethiopia. Perhaps even inspire you to help WHFC in their important efforts. I’ll be sharing posts on what I’ve been told along the way. I’ll also share posts from others working on this effort – both parents and those in health care who have traveled to and worked in Ethiopia.
To start things off, I’ll tell you a bit about my own family and why I’m doing this. My husband and I have a 3-year-old son who was born in Ethiopia and came home with us in 2007. He’s warm, loving, engaged, and eternally happy kid and we, of course, feel so completely blessed to be his parents. But his story, now our family’s story, is borne out of tragic circumstances and a kind of heart ache that’s still hard for me to understand. In fairness to my son, I won’t share the details of our story here. But I will tell you that his birth parents had not only a preventable but also treatable illnesses which combined with extreme poverty, ultimately led him to his orphan status by age 4 months. He was brought to WHFC’s orphanage in Addis and not long after, my husband and I were told we’d been matched with this baby boy. In a few short months, we’d be with him in Addis, learning the ins and outs of his daily routine in preparation for bringing him home.
It was an amazing time for us. We visited a beautiful country, we met our gorgeous son, we were learning how to be a family. And yet, I knew that I had witnessed something compelling. That what’s so basic here – a car, a road and a hospital to rush someone to in an emergency – doesn’t exist there. That so many children suffer from Rickets just because they don’t have enough to eat. That some in my son’s birth family, whom we met, have no drinking water. In all my joy as a new mom, I was grappling with what I’d seen. I’m still not sure if it’s the mom in me or the physician in me, maybe both, who was so stunned by the enormous difference in what we have in the States versus what our now extended family in Ethiopia didn’t have at a time when they needed it most. Access to health care that would have changed the outcome of my son’s life. What I have been able to do with this privileged look into the vast divide between how our basic needs are met here in this country versus how these needs are not met in Ethiopia, is to find a way to help. To play a role in closing this divide.
I’ve discovered that it’s pretty doable to play this role. Ethiopia is a safe, beautiful, democratic country. It has an excellent medical school. It holds the birth places of human kind and many religions. Its people are warm and smart and peaceful. And the WHFC projects are driven by Ethiopians on the ground so the work is destined to be successful. My current volunteer goal with WHFC relates to two of their hospital projects: I plan to raise enough money in one year to buy two ambulances for these two hospitals. These are not to replace old ambulances. These are to replace people being carried by their family members on make-shift stretchers over difficult terrain usually taking days and unfortunately often ending in the loss of life. It’s a cause that is so basic. So hard to dispute. And so important. So I am excited to help and inspired to write this blog and share the journey with you.
I’d love to know how much an ambulance costs and what you are doing to raise funds. My son, as well, is from the Sidama Zone and his first family was also hit with what would here be a completely curable disease. I would love to do more to support WHFC’s work in health care in Ethiopia.