For the 16 years that Dr. Brian Westerberg, a Canadian surgeon, worked volunteer missions at the Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, scarcity was the norm. The patients usually exceeded the 1,500 allotted beds. Running water was once cut off when the debt-ridden hospital was unable to pay its bills. On some of his early trips, Westerberg even brought over drugs from Canada in order to treat patients. But as low-cost generics made in India and China became widely available through Uganda’s government and international aid agencies in the early 2000s, it seemed at first like the supply issue had been solved.
