What incredible human beings.
Henry Marsh's attitude is astounding, as is Igor's. The dedication they have for saving and improving peoples lives is nothing short of heroic. They have to deal with a system that is in pieces; consultations with desperate patients who have been treated so poorly by the health system that their only hope is incredibly risky surgery. Surgery that has to be done with the most basic and primitive medial instruments. Most of which are provided by Henry himself. Patients have been treated so badly by the health care system, by the time they reach Igor or Henry there is often little to no hope, and huge risks involved if there is any hope at all.
Despite all this, Igor's own government has tried on numerous times to shut him down, rendering him unemployed for 2 years at one point in his career.
Yet both men are determined to keep pushing on and keep helping these unfortunate people. On patient Marian, who had to endure brain surgery with nothing more than a local anaesthetic is incredibly brave. I don't know how he went through such a brutal ordeal. The man was laying there with a pulse of 72 while they were boring into his skull with a cheap black n decker rechargeable drill. Astounding.
It made me feel so lucky, living in the western world with our comparatively luxury health care, and all because I got lucky by being born here and nothing more.
It also made me feel a huge admiration for these surgeons, both of which could have quite easily given up on the seemingly futile efforts of improving that part of the world, and move to somewhere like America where they could command outrageous salaries and live a much higher quality of life.
It's sad that here in the west we idolise singers and football players over truly remarkable selfless people like Henry Marsh.
This documentary really touched me, I hope that I can be even a tiny bit as altruistic as the people featured in it.