My uncle, Richard Douglass, is working hard to improve health care in Ghana and in the rest of the world. His efforts are moving towards utilizing remote diagnosis to provide expert care to people in remote rural areas. Using satellite connected Internet technologies he would connect villagers who cannot normally receive primary medical care with doctors in remote areas. No word yet on whether they will also be signing up for Facebook accounts.
Douglass proposed using satellite transmission equipment, mounted on trucks, to bring patients and doctors together virtually. Sending teams with this technology to villages on a regular basis would be akin to having a visiting medical team on a predictable schedule. A patient in rural Ghana who's never seen a doctor before could be diagnosed by a physician in Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti or Bloomington, Ind.
On October 14th, 2006, Michigan's gubernatorial candidates, Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) and Mr. Dick DeVos (R), were invited to Eastern Michigan University to discuss their plans for health care in Michigan.
Other speakers included Congressman John Dingell (D), Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R), and Dr. Henry Simmons, president of the National Coalition on Health Care.
My uncle, Richard Douglass, led the experts panel in their discussion.
DeVos didn't show up.
Governor Granholm gets my vote in this election. She promises to finally enact a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars. Thank you!
DeVos, on the other hand, runs a controversial business and thinks that giving people the freedom to choose will lead to a smoke-free environment*.
* I think that's bullshit.
My uncle, Richard Douglass, has a compelling opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press about the looming crisis the city will be facing due to the ongoing closings of nursing homes.
And now, with the addition of poor and isolated people with late-stage AIDS, MS and other disabling diseases, the frail elderly are sharing space with younger people who are mentally ill and some who are sexually active, and a mixture of patients that boggles the mind.
In Detroit, nursing homes are closing, not because the owners and staff don't want to do the work, but because the work cannot be done without unpaid heroics by the nursing staff.
Rich has researched public health in Detroit for decades, and this essay comes at the culmination of the last several years of his work.
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