The photos will make you cringe.
One shows a man having his right foot examined by his surgeon after having all five toes on it amputated.
In another, a woman is sitting up on the side of her bed, a beautiful white cat perched nearby. Her left leg is a stub, having been amputated well above the knee.
In yet another, a man whose foot had been recently amputated is being wheeled through a doctor’s waiting room. In the background sits a woman, also in a wheelchair, missing a leg.
All of these photos were taken in Greenwood, most of them at Greenwood Leflore Hospital.
They are used to illustrate an opinion piece, published this past week in The New York Times, about what’s wrong with health care in America, and most particularly what’s wrong in the parts of America where the population is overwhelmingly poor.
To complement his research, Nicholas Kristof, the longtime writer at The New York Times, came to Greenwood a couple of months ago.
Among the doctors he talked to was Raymond Girnys. The surgeon, according to Kristof, said that he has amputated so many limbs since moving to Greenwood in 2005 that he has nightmares of “being chased by amputated legs and toes.”
Most of these amputations could have been prevented if the patient hadn’t developed diabetes or had been able to manage the disease better.
Why doesn’t that happen?
Kristof’s answer is something all of us know who have been paying attention to the shockingly bad state of health in the Delta — not just exemplified in the high rates of diabetes and amputations, but also hypertension and heart disease, kidney failure and cancer, infant and maternal deaths.
We have an unhealthy population because so many are poor, so many are undereducated, so many lack access to the preventive medical care that catches health problems before they reach a crisis stage. And because so many who could do something about all of this are unwilling to do so.
It is tempting to blame those who lose a leg or a foot for their own problems, saying that they are reaping the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle that has caught up with them. But they are also reaping the consequences of government and societal decisions that tend to skimp on or reject any program that is designed to help the poor. Exhibit No. 1 is Mississippi’s nonsensical resistance to expanding Medicaid, which — at little to no cost to the state — would provide health care coverage to more than 200,000 individuals who are currently uninsured.
“It’s true that personal choices shape our health,” writes Kristof, “but so do our collective choices about expanding Medicaid, extending the child tax credit, providing adequate drug treatment and educating people about health choices. If we believe in personal responsibility for others, we should accept collective responsibility for ourselves.”
Kristof is an acknowledged liberal, but the statistics he shares have no ideological bias. They’re shocking.
- Life expectancy in Mississippi, at 71.9 years, is not just the lowest of the 50 states. It’s lower than Bangladesh’s.
- The average American can expect to live 66.1 years before facing an amputation, dialysis, blindness or other major health setback. That’s sooner than in Turkey, Sri Lanka, Peru, Thailand and other countries that are much poorer than the United States.
- An infant is 70% more likely to die in the U.S. than in other wealthy countries.
Kristof only paid a glancing notice to Greenwood’s hospital crisis, but his piece amplifies why it is so critical that Greenwood Leflore Hospital survives.
It is terrible how often surgeons such as Girnys have to use a bone saw to save an individual’s life. But think how much worse the situation would become if the hospital were to close.
Should that happen, we would lose not only the hospital but most of the remaining doctors in town. People with means who have chronic illness would be inconvenienced but able to find care elsewhere. The poor maybe not.
There would be more untreated diseases, more preventable amputations, more preventable deaths.
The picture would not be pretty.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
