A Doctor ’s Dispatch from Brazil

May 16, 2018" Okay, doc,  I ' ll do it,  I ' ll do it. " But he never did.We love featuring personal stories onVITAL from frontline health workers all over the world. We especially love it when they tell us about the clients who ’ve moved them, the moments that keep them coming to work each day, and what it’sreally like to work on the front lines of health care.Here ’s a dispatch fromV ânia Soares de Oliveira e Almeida Pinto, a physician in Brazil who works hard to combat hypertension and diabetes in her community. Today she ’s using her story to advocate for policy changes that could expand access to health care in her town, and in others like it.A Doctor ’s Dispatch from Brazil:Can you imagine a community without hope? A community that cannot look beyond today and can only see what is right in front of them?All they can see is today, this day. They live in poverty. What will we eat today? How will we survive today?When I arrived in the small, mountainous town of Teofilo Otoni in Brazil, I was a foreigner. They used to look at me and say, " Who is this girl? What does she think she ' s doing over here? "It was there I met Sergio. Sergio was a middle-aged diabetic and an alcoholic. And his exam results were alarming.I used to tell him, " Sergio, you must take your medicine. You must stop drinking. You must go on a healthier diet, because you ' re going to die this way. "And his answers were always, " Okay, doc. I ' ll do it. I ' ll do it. " But he never did.They ...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news