A year and a half into the COVID pandemic, we looked at medical fly-in missions, where health professionals from wealthy nations travel to low resource countries to set up and run short-term clinics for everything from dental care to cataract surgery. These missions, often as short as a week or two, are seen as both helpful and controversial. Criticisms abound: Fly-in staff may not understand the sort of care needed and may not be familiar with local culture and language. Untrained personnel sometimes provide services. There's no follow-up care. And there's been a lack of respect for host country health-care workers. A new emphasis on training and equipping local medical staff had recently begun emerging. Then came the pandemic. Travel restrictions led to widespread cancellation of fly-ins. We asked sociologist Judith Lasker, professor emerita of sociology at Lehigh University and author of Hoping to Help: The Promises and Pitfalls of Global Health Volunteering, how such programs are faring now that the pandemic emergency is over. Here's her assessment.
Over the next week, we'll be looking back at some of our favorite Goats and Soda stories to see "whatever happened to ..."
