Hit It Girls
PYONGYANG, DEC. 5, 1999
In the children's hospital there was an eight-year-old girl with an open femoral fracture who badly needed an operation. But we lacked the proper medicine and equipment to perform osteosynthesis (a procedure fusing bones together). When we began the procedure, the girl whimpered quietly; later she began shrieking, wracked by pain all over. She was on the operating table for an hour and a half -- but the spinal anesthetic we had lasted no longer than 45 minutes. Other anesthetics and painkillers were not available. Her mother was crying at the sight of her trembling daughter. The room temperature in the operating theater during the entire procedure hovered around 4 degrees Celsius
Operations without an anesthetic are the norm. At one hospital, the leg bone of a man who had been hit by a car became badly infected with bacteria. There were no antibiotics. Vollertsen watched as doctors liquored the man up with cheap rice wine and amputated his whole leg: "It was like the Stone Age."
