was about to hazard a guess, but Greg hadn’t waited for her response. He adjusted the drip and straightened up. She could sense the fatigue and something else—could it be anger?—behind his professional exterior.
‘We’ve done everything we can for the time being. It’s in the lap of the gods now.’ He tossed his gloves into the bin. ‘The main problem is caused by formula. The government spends substantial sums of money promoting breast-feeding, but the problem is with the women who are HIV positive. The danger of them transmitting the disease to their infants through breast milk is just too large, so they are encouraged to give their babies formula. Unfortunately formula is too expensive for most of them, so they start diluting it to make it go further. Then the children simply don’t get enough calories or nutrition. And as if that isn’t bad enough, a large number of the outlying villages still don’t have access to clean water. So the women mix the powder with water from the river. And what you see before you is the result.’
‘Can’t we do anything about it?’ Kirsty asked. ‘Surely it’s just a matter of education?’
Greg smiled, but there was no humour in his eyes. ‘Education and clean water. That’s what is needed. In the meantime…’ He let the words hang in the air for a moment. ‘In the meantime we do the best we can. Come on, Kirsty, as you’re about to see, there is plenty more for us to do.’
‘But doing the best we can isn’t enough. Is it? Not if children are still dying?’ Surely he wasn’t going to tell her there was nothing they could do to prevent this? He didn’t strike Kirsty as a man who let anything stop him from doing what was right.
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Greg said quietly but firmly. ‘Right now we have work to do. You take the consulting room next door. I’m just across the hall. If you need me, give me a shout, but try the nurses first. I think you’ll find that there is precious little they can’t help you with.’ And without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heel and left the room.
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