{"id":850,"date":"2014-08-22T09:16:40","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T13:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/globalhealth\/?p=850"},"modified":"2014-08-22T09:16:40","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T13:16:40","slug":"finding-inspiration-in-rwanda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/2014\/08\/22\/finding-inspiration-in-rwanda\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Inspiration in Rwanda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Susan Green<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dartmouth-hitchcock.org\/findadoctor\/profile\/844\/Steven_P_Bensen_MD\" target=\"_blank\">Steve Bensen<\/a> (\u201990) talks about the two months he spent in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rwanda\" target=\"_blank\">Rwanda<\/a> earlier this year, you can hear the optimism in his voice. Exhilarated by his first foray into global health, he wants to help others have a similar experience.<\/p>\n<p>Bensen, an associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and physician at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who specializes in gastroenterology and hematology, is the first gastroenterologist to participate in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrhconsortium.moh.gov.rw\" target=\"_blank\">Human Resources for Health<\/a> (HRH) program. A seven-year partnership between the Rwandan Ministry of Health, the Clinton Foundation, and several U.S. medical schools, including Geisel, HRH is committed to rebuilding the medical education and health-care systems in Rwanda.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI tried for a number of years to do something like this and investigated different avenues,\u201d Bensen says. \u201cBut it\u2019s difficult for a gastroenterologist because we are dependent on technology when offering our skills.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although there is significant gastrointestinal (GI) disease in Rwanda, physicians lack both the equipment and training to provide specialized care. Armed with hundreds of donated endoscopic devices\u2014biopsy forceps, snares, balloon dilators, PEG kits, and esophageal band ligators\u2014Bensen\u2019s goals were to teach physicians, residents, and interns to perform simple GI procedures and to show hospital managers the importance of providing these devices. \u201cThere\u2019s an amazing amount of good to be done with fairly simple instruments,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2014\/finding-inspiration-in-rwanda\/\">Read more...<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Bensen, an associate professor of medicine, had long wanted to get involved in global health work. He recently got his chance when he spent two months helping to train physicians and residents at two hospitals in Rwanda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-rwanda","author-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/cghe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}