I wrote yesterday about how I attended a summer institute in Paris that focused on health beyond borders. The final keynote speaker was Dr. Craig Spencer, who shared his work rescuing and treating migrants in the Mediterranean.
Dr. Spencer has worked extensively in global health, and in 2015 wrote an essay published in The New England Journal of Medicine about contracting Ebola when he was treating patients in Guinea. He was a clinician who became a patient, fighting for his life.
In Spencer’s piece, he outlines how the “Ebola treatment center in Guéckédou, Guinea, was the most challenging place I’ve ever worked.” Though there was no clear breach of protocol, Spencer still returned home having contracted Ebola, becoming “New York City’s first Ebola patient.” Spencer shares both the anxiety and compassion he felt in caring for patients with Ebola: “Difficult decisions were the norm: for many patients, there were no applicable algorithms or best-practice guidelines.”
Dr. Spencer shares how, back in New York, after “the suffering I’d seen, combined with exhaustion, made me feel depressed for the first time in my life.” Though immediately presenting to the hospital the moment he exhibited any sign of illness or elevated temperature, Spencer is vilified in the media, his activities upon returning home scrutinized and “highly criticized…. People excoriated me for going out in the city when I was symptomatic, but I hadn’t been symptomatic — just sad. I was labeled a fraud, a hipster, and a hero. The truth is I am none of those things. I’m just someone who answered a call for help and was lucky enough to survive.”
Spencer calls out the panic that ensued after his diagnosis, how politicians “took advantage… to try to appear presidential instead of supporting a sound, science-based public health response.” He points out that “At times of threat to our public health, we need one pragmatic response, not 50 viewpoints that shift with the proximity of the next election. Moreover, if the U.S. public policy response undermined efforts to send more volunteers to West Africa, and thus allowed the outbreak to continue longer than it might have, we would all be culpable.” Spencer notes not only the misguided response to his own infection, but also the ripple effects this policy could have had on the outbreak worldwide. His is a cautionary tale of how a response to any public health situation must be grounded in steady pragmatism and based in scientific fact. Lives depend on it.
Writing Prompt: Dr. Spencer shares how, after witnessing significant suffering through his work with Ebola patients, he felt “depressed for the first time in my life.” If you are a medical provider, have you experienced similar secondary trauma? How did this manifest? Where did you find support? Alternatively, consider that Spencer urges us to “overcome” fear. Reflect on what you are fearful of, from a public health standpoint or otherwise. Is it a rational or irrational fear? How might it be overcome? Write for 10 minutes.