Doctors Go Far Afield to Battle Epidemics

Dr. Grace Phiri, at the pediatric ward of the Queen Elizabeth hospital, Maseru, has been the sole pediatrician in Lesotho’s government service for most of the past 17 years.

By CELIA W. DUGGER
NYT

MASHAI, Lesotho — At a clinic in the mountains, reached only by crossing a churning river in a rowboat, Dr. Paul Young, a pediatrician raised in the housing projects of Savannah, Ga., soothed a fussy baby. She stared at him, fascinated, as he made soft popping sounds with his lips and listened to her heart through a stethoscope.

“I used to be afraid to look at the babies’ test results,” he said after examining a bunch of children, who were born healthy despite having H.I.V.-positive mothers. “But now, most of them are negative.”

Dr. Young, 33, and the nurses he trained here have persuaded many pregnant women to get tested and take the drugs that prevent them from passing the disease to their newborns. It is all part of a charitable effort he joined in 2008 for $40,000 a year and the chance to work in this AIDS-afflicted country, which has just one pediatrician in its entire government health system.

“If this was the last thing I did, if this was the only job I ever had in life, I would have served my purpose,” he said.

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