Save Lives with a Dollar-Medical Aid in Africa (Ghana)

Ayden Goldstein Start Date: Dec 27, 2017 - End Date: Oct 22, 2018
  • Accra, Greater Accra Region, Ghana
  • Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana
  • Arusha Region, Tanzania

My Travel Story

by: Ayden Goldstein Start Date: Dec 27, 2017 - End Date: Oct 22, 2018
An 8 year old little girl in critical condition flies past you on a stretcher, a flurry of doctors swarm around her. You overhear that she was hit by a car and she needs to be intubated, quickly. The doctors around her hurry to get her in stable condition. One doctor turns and demands the nearby nurse to retrieve the plastic tubing used for intubation but they come in different sizes and right now there are only adult sized tubes in the tray. What do you do at this point if your only option is no longer available? There is a child in front of you that needs immediate action, but there are no tubes and you might not have time to find more.
In Ghana, the doctors struggle with a lack of resources every day. Most hospitals and clinics are powered by the same doctors and nurses on rotation who treat patients in understaffed and underfunded facilities. Rescources are not always available as they should be, leaving the doctors and nurses with no other option but to makeshift alternatives. This means the medical staff has to be consistently innovative and able to adjust to unsuitable circumstances in order to save lives.
With every donation, effort and assistance, the amount of preventable death, illness and struggle increases so drastically that the bare minimum is necessary to make a big difference. For example, on Christmas of 2016, I gave 20 dollars that was used to buy cups for an orphange in Kumasi. This seems to be insignificant to all of us with the plastic cups we throw away and clean pipe water, but the children there didn't have things to drink out of, or running water. Due to just the donation of 20 dollars, the kids were able to have something to drink out of that was clean and that they did not have to share. One of the great things about donating/volunteering in Ghana is that not much effort is needed to see how far your help extends and how easy it is to touch the lives of others. There is no worse feeling than standing in front of someone, knowing how to help them but unable to because of something out of your control, and absolutely no better feeling than seeing patients lives saved, watching them recover to rejoin their family again, or seeing how faces light up when you give a few cups to those who need them.
I am currently in America but after medical school I plan on frequently visiting Ghana and other countries when able. I intend to continue to donate, fundraise and volunteer myself personally until the hospitals I volunteer in have better working conditions and more available equipment.
  • Accra, Greater Accra Region, Ghana
  • Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana
  • Arusha Region, Tanzania