Trading bankruptcy for health

How much poverty would you risk for your health?

Toward the end of grad school, I found myself across a cafeteria table from a Malagasy colleague named Jean Luis. I’d spent the last few months buried in the final chapter of my dissertation, whose entire premise had been prompted by the story of another Malagasy man named Sambany.

In 2015, Sambany, a rice farmer in his 60s, presented to the surgeons on Mercy Ships in Madagascar. He had a tumor larger than his head.