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HomeBooksA US doctor's experience of Botswana's HIV/Aids treatment programme

A US doctor's experience of Botswana's HIV/Aids treatment programme

Baxter
Daniel Baxter

When an American doctor leaves a high-powered position in 2002 and heads off to Botswana to help implement its HIV/Aids treatment programme, he has a glib patter to explain his motivation for doing so. When he returns eight years later, he realised that he was not so much the giver as the recipient of a great human gift.

When Daniel Baxter, the medical director of a large community health centre in New Yor City, accepted an invitation to work in Botswana, he hardly knew where to find the country on a map, Yet he set out nonetheless, naively confident that he would do good by bringing his first-world expertise to help in the roll-out of Africa's first HIV/Aids treatment programme. But Baxter's good intentions were quickly overwhelmed by the reality of AIDS in Africa, his misguided altruism engulfed by the sea of need around him.

Lifted up by Botswana's remarkable and forgiving people and by the country's majestic beauty, Baxter soldiered on. His memorable encounters with those living with HIV/Aids – their unfathomable woes assuaged their oft-repeated declaration 'But God is good!' – profoundly changed the way he thought about himself and his role as a doctor.

Picador describes the book as "compelling, humorous, courageous and often heart-breaking". Ghanaian philosopher and political theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah writes: "Dr Baxter tells the story of Botswana's struggle with AIDS with the insight of a medical expert and the compassion of a decent human being. This book forces us to face a world of suffering, but it also brings a message of hope."

One Life at a Time: A Doctor's Memoir of Aids in Botswana
Daniel Baxter
Picador Africa

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