The story was all too familiar. A patient is diagnosed with locally aggressive prostate cancer. A few days before the surgery, the patient does not show up for his preoperative visit. We call the patient. “We noticed you didn’t show up for the pre-op, is everything okay?” “I am sorry, doc. Had to cancel — …
The Trump administration’s policy blocking US aid to foreign entities that provide abortion services is at odds with the laws of many developing countries, including South Africa. But with so much money on the line, how can governments uphold women’s rights? My country liberalized abortion more than two decades ago, but on January 23, 2017, US …
I grew up a nomad in Pakistan, part of a caste that was considered untouchable. I scavenged garbage, begged on the streets, and learned to read Urdu by picking up discarded school books that my mother, a housemaid, would bring me from the homes of rich kids in Lahore. Books soon became my weakness; I would …
In the drylands of Marsabit, my home county in northern Kenya, people have traditionally regarded women as weak and timid. My people are nomadic livestock herders known as “pastoralists.” Livestock are our major asset and men own them, trade them, and handle the money. Women raise the children, cook, and depend on men to make …
We fixate so much on sexually transmitted diseases like HIV that we neglect the other issues LGBTQ+ individuals face that prevent them from accessing healthcare in the first place. One day, a young man walked into my medical clinic in Nairobi, Kenya. He was accompanied by almost a whole village — mother, uncle, brothers. I asked him how old …