Word: azar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Kala-azar itself was not the only problem. One day a patient who had gone mad threw a spear through another man's chest. Seaman operated and saved the man's life. Then she and De Wit operated on a man so riddled with tropical ulcers that his bones were exposed...
...whom were unable to read, required the creation of a massive card-filing system and the training of a competent local staff. Family members were taught to fill syringes to lines marked with tape and then to administer the doses themselves. "Jill Seaman has treated more cases of kala-azar than anyone else in the world," says Dr. Robert Davidson, senior lecturer in infectious and tropical diseases at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London. "She has personally dealt with more than 10,000 cases...
...price of stopping the epidemic, which amounted to more than $1 million a year poured in by MSF-Holland, has been high in human terms as well. Of 70 Nuer and Dinka nurses trained by Seaman and the other MSF doctors, more than 75% have come down with kala-azar themselves. Five lost children to the disease...
...confronting human misery. "We all make choices," she says. "Sometimes you can decide to do one thing, and to do that one thing really well." McHarg has assigned her, along with De Wit and another doctor, to a flying satellite team that roams from village to village treating kala-azar and tuberculosis. TB is a special problem today because kala-azar has so weakened the Nuer's immune system that any subsequent infection is often fatal. In August, McHarg dispatched Seaman to Ethiopia to survey a new outbreak of kala-azar. Seaman is also working on a pilot project...
...next big epidemic in Sudan will probably be sleeping sickness. The African trypanosome parasite that causes it is a distant cousin of the kala-azar protozoan. Infection rates in some villages in Western Equatoria, just south of the western Upper Nile, are already running at 20%. Experts question whether the disease can be treated without hospitalization--an option that, because of the large numbers infected, is out of the question. It is the kind of impossible field-medical problem that is tailor-made for Jill Seaman, and she has already indicated that she would like to get involved...