How I learned to understand the world – Hans Rosling - Review
Once I had finished reading this book, one aspect was clear which
points to a misleading title of the book. It’s a biography of Hans Rosling and
his experience in identifying causes of epidemic in a few African countries, I
believe that a better title could have been given.
Hans Rosling is a medical practitioner who chose to serve on his own will during the early 80's in
Mozambique, a downtrodden poverty stuck African country. The challenges are
daunting ranging from uneducated nurses, dearth of qualified doctors, lack of hospitals,
minimum or no allocation of funds and on top of all an epidemic that threatened his presence in the African nation.
Given the size of challenge and a never-ending queue of
patients, Hans understood that the best approach has to be minimal treatment for all rather than the best possible
one for a few, considering the time and resource constraints, we have to agree that he was right. He underwent immense moral dilemmas when treating his patients and I
will highlight a couple of them. In his early days in Mozambique, a women had
come up to him for fixing her broken leg, Hans does his best in getting the leg
in place post which plasters were wound around the fractured leg.
Unfortunately, Hans fails to foresee the constant moment of the patient’s leg due to
pain that realigned it's position during the healing process. When
the plaster was broken down, Hans was shocked to she the fractured leg being cross
aligned rather than straight. Despite Hans trying to convince the patient for a
re-surgery, the women chooses to walk off with the enforced disability stating
that there was no one to take care of her chickens and grandkids. I must acknowledge
that the level of compromise exhibited by people of extreme poverty is truly earth
shattering.
Another case was when he was forced to cut unborn baby into
pieces because it happened to be the only effective method to save the mother. Teen
pregnancy means an extremely narrow room for the unborn babies to make a
natural exit.
Having grown up and graduated in Sweden, the healthcare experience
in African countries would have certainly proved to be an exhibition of hell on
earth.
A couple of Hans work were truly outstanding, the first one
was the graphical representation of lifespan Vs Income comparison that includes
200 countries covering 200 years.
(73)
Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC
Four - YouTube
I have given the link to the graphical representation and it’s
mind-blowing. Point to note is that his son and daughter-in-law have been instrumental
in making the outcome possible.
His second outstanding contribution comes from identifying
the root cause of an epidemic in Mozambique called Konzo that paralysis the
lower limbs of the affected patients. Getting to accomplish this discovery in
poverty struck African country highlights the never say die persona of Hans.
To add on, Hans was diagnosed testicular cancer in his late
20’s which he had overcome but succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2017.
A good read and is worth imbibing the fighting attributes of
noble human who dedicated his life to humanity.
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