The other day in one of my posts here, I was comparing the medical care commonly available in America to that in Guatemala. In Guatemala, diarrhea (caused by any number of intestinal disorders) is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5. In fact it’s the third leading cause of death across the entire population of this country – most of the intestinal bugs coming from polluted water supplies.

I asked if you could imagine your infant or toddler dying in your arms from the ravages of diarrhea? Of course not, not in this country. Not when we could make an appointment with the pediatrician or zip right over to the 24 hour walk-in clinic. Those services aren’t available to most Guatemalans.

Yet just a couple of days after saying this, I answered a frantic knock on the front door, to find my neighbor’s partially clad 8 year old son, his face full of fear, stammering that his baby sister had quit breathing and was turning blue!

Of course I was there in an instant, talking to 911 as I went. I found a panic-stricken mother, hovering over her 16 month old, tears running down her cheeks. As I was asking questions and getting ready to administer CPR, the infant gasped and spit up mucous, and began to take shallow breaths. The minute I put my hands on her, I could feel she had an extreme fever. Her body was like an oven. She was weak and pale. Sure, sickness strikes our bodies even in America.

But here’s the rest of the story. The 911 operator answered my call in less than 10 seconds. And in less than 5 minutes, the paramedics had arrived, closely followed by the ambulance. Equipment bags in hand, the medical technicians were in the neighbor’s house, calmly assessing the situation and forming a plan for emergency action. Twenty minutes later, that infant was in the ER of the local medical center, being examined by a highly trained medical staff.

As it turned out, this child had an advanced case of strep, and her own mucous had temporarily blocked her trachea. An injection of antibiotic and some fever reducer med, and she was on her way home.

But had there been a life threatening condition, you can bet the odds were much in her favor that the doctors would have been able to save her. In Guatemala, the odds are that child would have died.

There’s no law that says every country should have a great health care system. There’s no law that says things in this world are fair. There’s no law that says babies can’t die.

But when I consider the condition of the people of Guatemala, and the majority of the world’s population for that matter, I feel like we live in a bubble here in the USA. A blessed bubble of unreality, compared to most of the rest of the world.

Maybe we should be on our face in daily gratitude, instead of complaining about the costs. Maybe we should be worried about how we’d adapt if our system fell apart and things we take for granted like health care, were suddenly not available. Maybe a lot of things …

But the other night, after I’d held my next door neighbor’s baby girl, limp and panting in my arms, I had a dream. I had a dream of nonstop medical teams operating in Guatemala. Not one week a year, in one part of the country, but every week of every year in every part of the country. And not just Guatemala, but all over Central America.

Why not? There are more than enough medical personnel in this country alone to handle that task, just by giving one week a year. And there is more than enough money in this country to cover the costs. We could easily pay for this if we just skipped eating out once or twice a month, or drove the old car an extra year.

Think about it.

So now what are you going to do?