Word: karefa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Karefa-Smart and his family went to New England, where his wife was raised. A friend at the Medical School, Dr. Alonzo Yerby, persuaded him to come back to Harvard to teach public health...
...marginal importance at the Medical School. But his success has been limited. After a steady diet of Dr. Kildaire and Marcus Welby, Americans are conditioned to curative medicine. "It's natural," says Dr. Dieter Koch Weser, associative dean of the Faculty of Medicine and a close friend of Karefa-Smart. "Someone comes to you with a high fever, you give him antibiotics, and two days later, you have accomplished a minor miracle. It's dramatic. But if you walk into a village, line up 200 children, and shoot them with a vaccine, you're no hero...
...Sometimes, this will have to happen," Karefa-Smart says. "It will not be easy for the doctor, but you have to think of how many lives can be saved with the money that might buy one kidney dialysis machine. You have to set priorities, think of the community. Sometimes you will appear a villain...
Americans, Karefa-Smart has found, would usually rather be the hero. "The American success story has always been that of the individual," he explains. "Supposedly, an individual can by his own efforts rise from lowly cabin boy to president. So the individual tends to look after himself. True community health and capitalism may well be antagonistic...
While his years in the west have taught him the techniques of modern medicine, the workings of power, and the comfort one man may occasionally achieve, Karefa-Smart has resisted the indivudal-oriented outlook--he says he still thinks like an African...