Pestilence in Abyssinia

<p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Twice divorced and often lonely sixty-three-year-old Robert Caanen is a member of a small international contingent of physicians sent to help Ethiopians initiate antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of AIDS. He's assigned to a clinic in Dessie a city northeast of Addis. It's only two hundred miles by road but nine hours of driving due to the appalling road conditions. Dessie has a storied past in Ethiopia's history.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Like so much of Ethiopia the hospital seems frozen in time but it has already enrolled more than 3000 patients the vast majority of them from rural areas without electricity water or an address. It's Caanen's job to mentor the doctors in the art and science of HIV patient care.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>He meets and befriends fellow volunteer Floyd Handel. Together the two men encounter the beauty as well as the ugliness of this backward and impoverished country enduring the frustrations of trying to deliver health care in spite of self-serving NGOs a lack of resources and ignorance of HIV.</span></p>