As sick patients flood hospitals throughout the Sunbelt and healthcare providers step up selflessly to meet the challenge, I think about my friend Rosa Moreno, the most courageous nurse I ever met.
I first met Rosa in the early 1990s in the village of San Carlos, Ecuador. She was the kind of warm, caring nurse we all hope to have by our side when we get ill. Somehow Rosa was able to sustain that compassion while treating patients seven days a week through a health crisis that went on not just for months but for decades. Her community was the epicenter of a toxic waste site that came to be known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.” Though not a doctor, Rosa was forced by necessity to do what she could to treat many different forms of cancer, including childhood leukemia. I’ll never forget the pit in my stomach when she first showed me the handwritten log she kept of the cancer patients who came to her little clinic for treatment or palliative care.
https://news-mongabay-com.cdn.amppr...ar-on-environmental-defenders-commentary/amp/
I first met Rosa in the early 1990s in the village of San Carlos, Ecuador. She was the kind of warm, caring nurse we all hope to have by our side when we get ill. Somehow Rosa was able to sustain that compassion while treating patients seven days a week through a health crisis that went on not just for months but for decades. Her community was the epicenter of a toxic waste site that came to be known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.” Though not a doctor, Rosa was forced by necessity to do what she could to treat many different forms of cancer, including childhood leukemia. I’ll never forget the pit in my stomach when she first showed me the handwritten log she kept of the cancer patients who came to her little clinic for treatment or palliative care.
https://news-mongabay-com.cdn.amppr...ar-on-environmental-defenders-commentary/amp/