Third-World Hospitals Well-Stocked With Unusable High-Tech Gear

Without parts and training, they're expensive paper weights

"Isso não funciona." "Nós não sabemos como usá-lo." "Os manuai stambé mestão em Inglês ou Espanhol.""This doesn't work." "We don't know how to use it."  "The manuals are only in English or Spanish."

These complaints were the first words I heard from nurses and doctors at Chicuque Rural Hospital in Mozambique, echoing the sentiments of staff at other hospitals around the country. On my first day of work, I was given a tour of the facility, culminating in what would be my office '"a stuffy, fanless storage room.  The only furniture was a cabinet filled with incubators, defibrillators, and patient monitors, locked away unused. Most accessories'"batteries, disposable electrodes, and syringes'"were past their expiration and had to be trashed.