A Lesson from Guatemala

By Evan Falchuk

Guatemala is a developing country, with great natural beauty, hard-working people and many challenges.  Most Americans look at places like Guatemala and see only the challenges.  Some see opportunity.

I’ve just returned from Guatemala, where I met with our business partners, government officials, and others.   And I can tell you a universal truth.  People across the world want the best medical care they can get.  They aren’t looking for the latest technologies and drugs and treatments – or, rather, they aren’t looking only for those things.  No, what is most important to whoever I meet, no matter where they live, is that they are able to get the right diagnosis, and the right treatment.

It’s a harder thing to get in some places than in others.  Americans don’t realize that one of our great exports is our health care.  Not our system – but our know-how, education, medications, devices, techniques.  In many ways, health care promises to be the economic engine of 21st century America.  And getting access to it doesn’t necessarily mean getting on a plane and coming to the states.  At Best Doctors this is what we do – bring the expertise of the world’s leading doctors to where – and when – it’s needed.

After a speech I gave in Guatemala one of the audience members came to me and said she thought something I said was very important.  “Every person deserves the right diagnosis and treatment,” she said.  It’s a simple concept that is much harder to make reality.  But it should be the basis on which any health care program, health care provider – or health care system – must be built.

  • "Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the class room. Let not your conception of manifestations of disease come from work heard in the lecture room or read from the book: see and then research, compare and control. But see first."
    - Sir William Osler, MD
    The Father of Modern Medicine
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