An update from Zambia...

Just to update anyone who might be wondering, I recently received an email from a current JHR trainer in Zambia that explained the circumstances surrounding Binion's death:

I would like to let you know that one of our Zambian friends and colleagues, Binion Kapoma, died on February 10, 2009. He died at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka of cerebral malaria or meningitis that had been misdiagnosed as malaria; I have heard both reasons given for the cause of his death. I attended the funeral on Feb. 12. He was 34 years old.

I feel better now, at least knowing what happened. It's depressingly close to what I had assumed - that something preventable had gone unnoticed or unattended to at UTH. It's the only real public hospital that exists in Lusaka and is not up to international standards. Shortly before I left Zambia, there was a city-wide controversy when nurses at UTH were assaulted for leaving patients to languish in waiting rooms. A shocking number of seemingly educated individuals supported the beatings, the origins of which were obviously caused by a lack of human and physical resources and not an unwillingness to triage.

Whatever the cause, Binion is the third Zambian I've known that's died young, even by Sub-Saharan standards. While I was nowhere as close with the other two (who both died in traffic accidents), it illustrates the dramatic difference in life expectancy between our two cultures, and that the rules just don't apply to poor Zambians. Binion was university-educated and solidly middle-class in his social hierarchy - that, more than his age, is what surprised me most about his sudden passing.