Fox asked Selnow, the organ-ization's exectutive director, to find one Iraqi doctor who had successfully treated patients with help from WiRED. So he went to the director of Baghdad's main hospital - and got a surprise.
"He said, 'What do you mean, one? Go onto the hall, and any doctor you see, can give you a dozen stories of how they treated patients successfully (using WiRED technology).'
|
|
Soft-spoken, erudite, not a big man, the 57-year-old Selnow does not seem a likely candidate for months of work, amid unrest and insurgents. But he is such a candidate. He enjoyed the holidays at home after logging 18 months expanding WiRED's Medical Information Center program in Iraq.
The centers are networks of computers and CD-ROMs of the latest medical books, journals or databases. The work - supervising installation of the centers in Iraqi hospitals and medical schools - involved low-profile trips into unstable regions, amid a ubiquitous insurgent presence and the constant, eerie music of gunfire and bombs.
In that surreal time, Selnow enjoyed pleasant dinners in doctors' homes, eating with their families. He watched children play in the streets with the sound of gunfire all around. He learned that his friend, a State Department employee named Jim Mollen with whom he roomed while on an April 2003 assignment underwritten by the U.S. Department of State, had been killed in November just outside a green zone in Baghdad.
He recalls the mindset he adopted.
"I never felt threatened by the people I worked with," he said in an earlier interview, "but you stay alert and aware of the situation around you, and don't put yourself in the position of unnecessary risk."
His work in Iraq, undertaken at the request of the State Department shortly after American soldiers were deployed there, is not the first such mission for WiRED.
In its eight years, WiRED has harnessed computer and Internet technology to put information and communication at the fingertips of professionals and students in hospitals and medical schools in areas like the Balkans, Africa, Central and South America and Iraq. Next comes tsunami-battered Asia.
But on his first Iraq visit in spring 2003, Selnow saw surreal contradictions. He and colleagues stayed in one of Saddam's huge, lavish palaces, which once took 500 people to clean every day.
They found a medical community "locked away from medical information because of Saddam," Selnow said. "They couldn't receive medical journals or travel outside the country. They were pretty much locked away for 20 years. Dealing with 1980s medicine."
In four visits over 18 months, Selnow organized or helped with the installation of nine Medical Information Centers in Baghdad, Najaf, Basra and Kurdish regions. The doctors' responses delighted him.
"They were like kids in a candy store" over the computers and information, he said.
And little wonder. Now, Selnow said, Iraqi professionals "can access the same information as Western hospitals. They can get the same as Harvard or (the University of California, San Francisco.)"
Language was not a barrier: In Iraq, Selnow said, medical professionals spoke fluent English.
Key to the whole process was respect despite political acrimony. Selnow cited the WiRED mission statement: "We believe assistance programs are like ropes. You cannot push them; the people must pull for themselves. Provide the people with tools, the training, some ongoing help, they will take the programs to places you could never have imagined for them."
The Iraqi doctors, he said, "are as modern as anybody in the West. The problem is, they don't have the information. It's a huge mistake for Americans to think they live in caves."
To be effective, there must be partnership, he said.
"If you are told how to use something in your own area, it kills the notion of partnership, and puts you in a role that demeans you," he said. "We're good at what we do. You're the experts at what you do. That way, it's putting two shoulders to the cart."
Things went smoothly on Selnow's first visit. He and his colleagues were able to eat out. But on later trips, things got worse.
"On that first visit, we could go have kebabs at restaurants," Selnow said. "We can't do that today. Americans don't go to restaurants and have meals. Period."
For transportation, they found they had two choices: costly armed security that made them visible targets, or inconspicuous travel in a beat-up rented car. "We were pretty much on our own," Selnow said.
In time, he refused to bring along any support personnel, even his technician. Selnow said he "did not want to subject anyone else to this."
The violence was heating up.
"There was a constant reminder of the volatility of the situation," Selnow said. "You'd wake up in the middle of the night to gunfire and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) going off. There was a constant din of war around you."
It all spilled over into the grotesque, he said. "It was odd to watch kids play, making kid noises, with gunfire in the background. Surreal."
But he said the Iraqis responded with heartbreaking resilience.
"People put it out of their minds," he said. "We tend to habituate, find ways to insulate. You don't want to (habituate) - but (the Iraqi people) don't allow themselves to lie down, stay in and cower. Life goes on."
Selnow spoke highly of them.
"The people are wonderful. "Ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine percent of the people are sweet, caring, trying to get on with their lives. Those are the people we're trying to put this together for."
His own background helped Selnow cope. In the early 1970s he was an Air Force pilot flying out of Europe. He faced "another kind of stress in the cockpit" - which, he quickly admitted, is not the same as being shot at.
A professor of communication psychology at San Francisco State University (now on sabbatical), he says that situations like Iraq are "where I can apply what I am trained to understand."
Selnow said he wishes the world would do the same.
"There's a lack of sensitivity I see in our own, I won't say media, maybe government," he said thoughtfully. "Listen to (Secretary of State Donald) Rumsfeld. Or (President George) Bush in the election. 'We're doing such wonderful things there.' ... There's a lot of rhetoric here that doesn't match the reality there.
"It's physically impossible for the media to walk that mile ... You can't walk down the street with a TV camera because you're so vulnerable."
Next in Iraq is Phase Two: WiRED hopes to install information centers into a total of 11 medical schools and two teaching hospitals. That depends on stability and conditions after Iraq's elections.
WiRED has already turned to Southeast Asia, with potential widespread disease following the Dec. 26 tsunami. Selnow says he hopes to set up some 50 information centers there.
It is all grueling work - but Selnow says "for me, it's immensely rewarding."
And he is quick to point out it's not just he who feels that way: There are about 25 volunteers around the United States and Europe, working behind the scenes balancing the budget, updating the Web site and more. None, including Selnow, get paid for this work.
"I don't make a cent," he said. "This restores my faith in people."
WiRED can be reached at P.O. Box 371132, Montara, CA 94037.
w