This article was originally published on CNN.com, and has been republished here with permission from the author.
Click here to read the original article.
As a doctor who works at an international news network, I often see the worst stories of all. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the horrific realities of the battlefield are funneled and concentrated in the medical tents where I have reported for more than a decade. I have seen patients infected with Ebola in West Africa who dehydrate to death, with no treatment in sight. There are other stories I still can't talk about.
Any doctor, any person really, will tell you it is the preventable deaths that haunt you the most; lives lost needlessly, when they could've been saved. If we can't get this part right, all of our other efforts toward treating the sickest patients lose meaning.
Depending on your perspective, homicides with a gun, which we witness far too often in this country, may not be the thing you consider when thinking of preventable deaths. If, however, you think of violence as an infectious disease, your perspective may change.
