Human Resources

Map showing the lack of access to safe surgery worldwide

“People value the machine more than human resources.”

We had an interesting clinical situation this week. Without going into the medical details, we had a patient with cancer that was experiencing kidney failure that needed to have dialysis. We don’t have dialysis machines in Moshi, but they do have the machines about 2 hours away in a larger city called Arusha. Dialysis machines are really expensive and hard to maintain, but somehow they have built a center there. The problem is that they don’t have people trained to obtain the vascular access that you need to actually do the dialysis. The patient has to go to Nairobi in Kenya for this, and then be transferred to Arusha for treatment.

Map of the path you would need to take. The small side of the triangle is 2 hours, so the long sides must be 6–7.

In discussing this one of the Tanzanian doctors exclaimed “People value the machine more than human resources!” In America, human resources is the boring thing that Toby does in the basement of your office building. In Africa, human resources means building up and securing your most valuable resource — people. The human mind is the most amazing thing on Earth. Created to handle a vast array of complexities, it is the resource that will define the next 50 years of African development.

It is always hard to know to help people without hurting them. I haven’t ever met many people that really invested in teaching and mentoring that ended up saying it did more harm than good. Sending medical supplies and outdated equipment is really easy. Investing in people takes time, but the returns can be exponential.