American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 Died
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Ten years ago, Renee Bach left her home in Virginia to set up a charity to help children in Uganda. One of her first moves was to start a blog chronicling her experiences.
Among the most momentous: On a Sunday morning in October 2011, a couple from a village some distance away showed up at Bach's center carrying a small bundle.
"When I pulled the covering back my eyes widened," Bach wrote in the blog. "For under the blanket lay a small, but very, very swollen, pale baby girl. Her breaths were frighteningly slow. ... The baby's name is Patricia. She is 9 months old."
Bach went on to write that Patricia had fallen sick three weeks earlier. But her parents had been unable to find anyone closer to home who could cure her.
Then, wrote Bach, "One of their relatives told them about a 'hospital' ... with a 'White Doctor.' "
Except Bach was not a doctor. She was a 20-year-old high school graduate with no medical training. And not only was her center not a hospital — at the time it didn't employ a single doctor.
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Sometimes, no care is better than bad care.
Dear Friend Sandy: Dr. Swango all over again.
Not new.
Always turns the stomach.
P&AB.
Enoch.
I had to Google Dr. Swango. Somehow, I had never heard of him.
I don't think Bach's intentions were murderous. I think the praise she received on social media led her to believe she was more capable than she actually was. But I do think that if she pulled such a stunt in the US, she would be found guilty of negligent homicide.
She had coworkers telling her that she was in over her head, but she chose to believe otherwise.
Her refusal to see that she was guilty of far worse than pride, and that she was causing harm to actual human children, does not speak in her favor.
Dear Friend Sandy: Good point.
The result of Swango and Bach turneds out to be the same, although with dissimilar numbers; and very different intentions.
Let's call it an anology, not an equivalent.
Thanks for making the distinctions clear.
Good catch.
P&AB.
Enoch.
Unfortunately true. I doubt that all of the deaths were the result of her substandard care, and perhaps most of them were not. It would be difficult to determine at this point. But it is clear that she engaged in dangerous practices with very little idea just how dangerous she was. Unfortunately, a reckless person can cause just as much harm as a malicious one.
Very good point, doesn't excuse the behaviour but still a good point
The local medical experts seem to want to claim that there were professional who should have been doing this work. But if that were true, it strikes me as odd that several charitable organizations should have so much work to do.
Her charity should have hired licensed medical professionals from the moment she decided she was going to start providing medical care. She did, eventually. Why not before?
Maybe she didn't have the money before. Maybe she couldn't find anyone to do the work before. I get the impression that she would have preferred to have doctors doing the work, but money and/or doctors clearly don't grow on trees. Wishing will not make them appear out of nothing.
It's not as if she was refusing to let doctors help her.
Then she shouldn't have been providing medical care. What she did was illegal, and it was unethical. It endangered lives. If you're fighting malnutrition, then fight malnutrition with food and water, not illegal blood transfusions.
She wasn't even properly trained to feed severely malnourished and dehydrated children. Get their electrolytes out of balance, and you stop their hearts.
Good intentions aren't enough.
Actually, the story varies on that.
That would be the preference, obviously. But if someone drops a sick kid on you and there is no other option, what are you supposed to do? Ignore it? Or do your best (even if your best isn't very qualified) to save the child?
I really don't get the impression that she was dong this for any purpose other than to help needy people.
There were other options. There were government clinics with professionals in her town.
And frankly, if she doesn't know what she's doing, her "best" might actually be causing harm. Like the transfusion she gave baby Patricia. If she isn't trained to recognize or treat transfusion reactions, then she shouldn't be giving transfusions. Period.
That's kind of a weird thing. What is going on at the hospital that some random woman could just cruise in and remove a deathly ill child who was actually being cared for? It seems like there must be more to that than we are hearing.
I know they say that's the case, but if that's true, why would anyone come to her even once, much less 900 times?
Maybe there is. And maybe even some Ugandans believed that, just because she was American, she would be able to provide better care than they were receiving in the hospital. It does not seem that she disabused them of this notion.
Her "clinic" seems to have grown from what was basically a food pantry. Once they started going to her for food, and local hospitals asked her to start feeding patients who had been released, she seems to have expanded into medical care. Did anybody other than fellow volunteers question her qualifications? Would they have had the means to investigate?
If these experts were so local, why didn't they step up and help?
There were hospitals and clinics in town. There were professionals available. Eventually, she even hired some.
But until then, a home-schooled high school grad with only a CPR certification was making medical decisions about critically ill infants.
First, do no harm.
This statement makes me wonder if she knows the difference between HIV and anaphylactic shock.
Read something about this person a month or so ago, she definitely exceeded her training/experience (or lack thereof) and what her common sense should have told her she could do
This article was the first I'd heard of it. I get that she wanted to help, but her cavalier attitude toward taking on much more than her training allowed seems to have appalled even fellow volunteers, who were dealing with the same difficult conditions that she was.
Props to her for doing so
Can't explain that, other than to say young people can be rather self-absorbed (even charitable ones) and maybe she didn't see the big picture.