3am

Sleep comes in cycles

Something kind of like this, which means at anytime during the night you are more or less likely to awaken.
Generally in my light sleep phases I can wake up check the time and go back to bed.
But every once in a while during these moments of light sleep my brain is sooo excited about an idea that I just can't go back to sleep.



Last night I was in light sleep around 3am, and my brain was just shooting forward about going to Zambia and building a hospital (this will probably be a reality in my 40s!), about being able to visit for the first time in 5 years next year!
My mind is soo excited and it is so hard to have to tell myself to cool it because I have to successfully make it through today, this week, this year, etc. I told my brain to chill, it didn't work...

So I managed to stay in bed for a few more hours, not really sleeping...
But I thought I would share what was keeping awake tonight, because if you get excited about it maybe you can start and I can come and meet you half way in a few years.

Let me start by discussing some of my motivations.
1. specialist care is hard to come by in Africa especially in rural areas
2. Machines and tests and all other shiny equipment needed for new millennium medicine are expensive and also hard to come back
3. I believe the current borders in Africa are not of our own making and I would like to blur those borders.
4. There are a lot of skilled Africans not working in Africa

So I was thinking
1. Building a hospital at a border and in Zambia we have a few pretty epic borders either the Tanzania/Malawi border, or Malawi/Zimbabwe, or the Botswana/Namibia/Angola area (although I have never been there and google says it's very filled with national parks).
Anyway, by building at a border we can pull resources and build a tertiary hospital that all surrounding countries can refer to. But we can all claim it as our own, it can be staffed and resourced by the best that all surrounded countries have to offer.
2. Zambia is currently discussing dual citizenship and if they are smart and let it pass through the new constitution it will mean that more Zambians will be coming back even if it's just to visit. I truly believe there are enough foreign trained or foreign working Zambian doctors that can come and work for a month or a week and volunteer or even be paid (too far ahead to know) for their specialist skills. I don't know the dual citizenship rules of the other countries (and the wee hours of the morning are for dreaming big, not researching). But I KNOW there are enough people in all those countries to build, equip, and staff a giant tertiary hospital.
I laid awake seeing visions of helicopters bringing patients, of specialist care centres, of patient and family residences.
3. I like the idea of building in a non-city. Cities, are already built up with rules of transport and roads and overcrowding, but to build a new city. To start from scratch incorporating all we now know, that is amazing. To start with roads wide enough, to lay a foundation for an effective public transport system, to plan ahea for open areas, for residential areas...
4. Additionally, I had visions of setting up a program to encourage African students studying elsewhere to come and do a placement for a few weeks and show them how exciting medicine can be in Africa, that we can have amazing equipment and they can live comfortable lives.
It can be the beginning of reversing the brain drain, giving them a reason to come home.

I kept seeing this building in my head, kept seeing parts added to it, initially just a clinic, then an emergency department and then a surgery department, then infectious disease, cardiovascular disease wards...obstetrics (that should probably come earlier).
Allowing students from the neighbouring countries to get excited about medicine, facilitating research, answering locally relevant questions.
PLUS tons of OTHER people come to Africa to research on us and then answer questions that matter to them and go back and make their healthcare better, imagine if we were testing new medications, new ideas, new equipment in order to better our own health.
I have images of preventative care, of sexual health clinics, vaccination, exercise and diet information sessions,

Then I thought about a name, I thought Border Hospital but that's already taken.
And then I thought it should be a unifying name something that incorporates either the languages of the relevant countries or their values in some way
Or even something like ZBNA (just the countries letters), but that's not very creative and I think they might be issues with letter order. So just something cool and unifying....I still haven't though of anything...but then it was time to actually get out of bed, and I only got 5 hours of sleep and I have about 7 hours of lectures today...hopefully I can be awake for it all.

*sigh* These are the visions that keep me up at night...