Feeling Altruistic? Here's your chance....

As I wrote in a recent post, I met up with a university friend in Bangkok last week and he described his harrowing hospital experiences working in a Banladeshi emergency room. He was buying a defribulator in the Thai capital, since he couldn't get it in Bangladesh.

My friend sent me an email today that perfectly describes his situation:

i had a patient last night who went into hypovolemic
shock (lack of blood in body because too much blood
went out of the body from her vagina). the hospital
ran out of a rare blood group AB+ for her, but
coincidentally I'm AB+ so we gave her a transfusion of
my blood. she died five hours later because we
couldn't transfuse the blood fast enough because we
don't have the correct machine for doing it. i don't
know how i feel about all of this. i'm a bit upset.

If you feel like making a donation, this is a cause where you can have a major impact. Some of the equipment in his hospital only costs $20, but isn't within the budget. My friend described the way many Non-Governmental Orgs waste donor money (he described Doctors Without Borders as being "just a bunch of Dutch guys driving around in Land Rovers--why?!?") and said he could put the money to better use buying the necessary equipment himself. I know you wouldn't get any tax write-offs, but think about it. Contact my friend at this address: khennric@yahoo.com He's in-country for another few months, and even after that, I'm sure he can get the equipment where it needs to go.