Sadder than Fiction

One of my guilty pleasures while traveling is watching cheesy movies and horrible television shows. I mean, truly horrible. Last night was CSI Miami (yes, they have CSI Miami in Ghana! Even stranger, they have Filipino soap operas!! Globalization works in funny ways.)

The CSI plot was quite silly: four men go up on a spaceship that sells rides to outer space as part of space tourism. While in space, a small meteor hits the ship, and the crew realizes they do not have enough oxygen to make it back to Earth. They weigh the consequences and ultimately decide to kill one of the passengers to get his oxygen (of course, the CSI team pieces this together over many clues).

I don't give the episode another thought until lunch today, when the subject of oxygen comes up in a very different context. I am speaking with Nana, who heads Ghana's "Fives Alive!" project to reduce under-5 child mortality across the country. Funded by the Gates Foundation, the 5-year project is a collaboration between the Institute of Healthcare Improvement and the National Catholic Health Services. I learn that the primary drivers of under-5 child mortality in this country are due to neonatal deaths, as well as malaria. Since the project's inception, they have been able to significantly reduce deaths due to malaria, but Nana was sharing some of the many challenges to reducing neonatal mortality.

Among these: many hospitals do not have enough medical necessities, such as oxygen. Oftentimes, two babies may need oxygen, but the hospital does not have enough. The administrator and doctor may decide to share the oxygen (e.g. one baby gets it for 30 minutes, and then they switch), but ultimately that often results in both babies dying. Instead, the doctor must essentially decide which baby will live and which one will not.

My heart sinks as she tells me this.

Sure, it won't make as entertaining a show as CSI and outerspace, but this is reality. I'm not about preaching, but sometimes I wonder what it would be like to put a television in a place like Babies R Us in Suburban Anywhere, USA -- and have middle class Americans obsessed with "which is the best stroller?" directly witness the reality elsewhere. ABC and 20/20 are launching a one-year focus on global health, with the premiere episode focusing on maternal health. They are looking into LifeSpring, which would be a pretty amazing opportunity to highlight our work. If I were them, I would come to Ghana as well... Nana and her team at Fives Alive! are pretty inspirational and I feel lucky to be part of the IHI quality improvement advisors course, learning from change agents like them.