The emergency room is at once both a fascinating and terrifying place. It is an exercise in balance and limitations, boiling down to either chaos or controlled chaos. This was my observation at a fully staffed, well stocked 400 bed regional referral center in west Texas. It tests the limits of my imagination to fathom what my counterparts are going through in rural flood stricken community relief clinics and hospitals are going through in Southern Punjab, Pakistan.
One can’t but help feel powerless. When patients are dying from imminently treatable conditions such as cholera, it’s enough to make anyone shake their heads in despair. It may be small, but we here at NCL feel compelled to help and would like to engage your help in doing so. $5 buys a weeks worth of antibiotics or 2 sachets of oral rehydration solution. We’ll donate $5 for each comment posted on our voting panel listed here , and wanted to thank those that have already commented. Seem like a cynical ploy to obtain votes for our SXSW panel? Nah, we’re more interested in the discussion, hence our tying our pledge to comments only. After all, we do label ourselves a social enterprise – so this just made sense.
For those of you that have already posted – thank you! We will honor your posts with our $5 donations, and keep you appraised of the giving process here on our blog. On August 28th, we’ll run our final tally, and write a check to Doctors Without Borders.
So far there are 11 comments = $55 worth of antibiotics and ORS packets. Can we hit $1k? Nerdcore army, that’s up to you.