FEBRUARY 18 — Sometimes aid workers, or any individual seeking to help another person, can struggle to distinguish where the line is between right and wrong.  Of course there are the cases of embezzlement and abuses of power and position, those things are not simply a line getting blurred, those are clear violations of wrong.  What I’m talking about is instances where ethics or laws are skirted due to a perceived greater good.  

There are times when the line isn’t blurry at all.  For example, you know you are lying about a situation and you do it anyway, you see the line and you cross it because it means someone’s life. I have done this. There was no perception of a greater good, it was life and death and not doing it meant the person in my arms would die, quickly, if I didn’t do it.  

And then there are lines that are more challenging to delineate. Over my years in East Africa, I have seen many foreign medical teams come in and out. These groups have treated many patients in rural areas where there are no doctors and have undoubtedly saved lives.  

Some of these groups I have been part of, I too have saved lives. It was very, very difficult for me to come to the place where I am now where I believe it is wrong of me, or others, to treat patients this way, and here is why. The people coming on these trips, though licenced in their home countries, are not licenced to practise in the countries where they are heading. Beyond this there are many ethical considerations which are more complex and more difficult to clearly define.  

I expect 99.9 per cent of us are  helping to a large degree, this is not a discussion about the sustainability or other ethical considerations of these projects, simply an acknowledgement that lives have been saved, and that is where the line is difficult; if they had not been treating patients many people would, probably, have died.  

It is hard sometimes to decide what is the greater good in this instance, obeying the law or potentially saving lives, the line is a bit blurry. However, I have come to believe that doing this is an abuse of power and position, especially when it is foreign teams involved, in disregarding local laws and undermining local doctors and practitioners.  

There are some lines, however, which have been crossed which seem so blatantly obvious, yet surprisingly not everyone sees it. A few years ago I was asked to do an HIV test on a woman and her newborn baby. I was shocked when the mother’s test came back positive.  The woman wept and wept for a long time before she settled.  

While she was being counselled I promised her that I would make sure that everything that could be done for her, was done for her. I had resources, jobs, access to medication and medical care; I was fully prepared to be by her side while she walked this journey.  

The people who were caring for her and her family told me, however, that they had all the same resources and intended to make sure she was ok. I had no reason to doubt them and I left.  

I did not stay in touch with this woman, though I occasionally got word of how she was.

Nine months later, I received word that she had died, complications from the nasty virus that had invaded her body. I was sad, devastatingly so, but more than sad I was confused. She was young and fairly healthy. With proper medical care I could see no reason why she would not be doing well. Medical care which I had offered but which I had been reassured would be cared for by others.  

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened just a few short weeks after her death. A foreign couple had been on some humanitarian mission in her community and heard of her death. Through a series of events they approached her husband, who now had four children on his hands, and told him that they would like to adopt the baby who I had tested nine months before for HIV with her mother. Ultimately the husband agreed and the baby was adopted by this couple, leaving behind the poverty of her birth as well as her siblings and her biological father.  

It would take many months of my investigating the adoption as well as the circumstances of her death to find out some ugly truths, including the fact that she had not been receiving health care. What surprised me was how many people felt like ultimately this was the best thing for the baby. Perhaps some wrongs had been committed, but ultimately she was going to grow up in a healthy and safe home with all of her needs met.

Many people felt that the perceived greater good, the baby being able to grow up in a stable home in the US,  justified the fact that the line had been crossed both in terms of child protection and family rights and indeed the integrity of adoption as a whole.

I disagree.  

Perhaps no one involved could have prevented her death, though I struggle to accept that possibility, but certainly everyone involved could have prevented the grievous devastation that comes when a child is taken from his/her culture and community and from his/her family under the guise that it is for her good.  

For some the line is blurry there. And I admit, sometimes it is for me too. Because I see, up close and personal, the children who are suffering because of gross malnutrition and disease which has invaded their world, and sometimes I want to say screw ethics and morality and what is right, for surely this also is wrong.  

But I believe we need to challenge ourselves to find solutions that are bigger than what is right in front of our eyes, shredding every bit of reserves we have left in our hearts. It will always be a challenge for me to see someone who I know how to help, and not help, in fact in my own code of ethics and morals say I cannot. The trick then comes in being able to find ways to help that are within the law and  don’t jeopardise the moral principles of justice as a whole.   

Ultimately ethics and morality cannot be compromised in our efforts towards social justice even if it seems that it is for the greater good. I will admit that line may still be blurry at times and at times it may need to be crossed when life is at stake, but especially when dealing with susceptible populations, much of which aid organisations work with, ethics cannot be compromised because if they are then the vulnerable have no assurances that right will prevail when it is their turn to need help.  

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.