The Trauma of Third World Medical Treatment

In our January issue of Undercurrent, we describe the difficulty of getting emergency medical care in Fiji. Here’s a story by one of our writers 36 years ago. Not much has changed, he says. Taveuni, New Year’s Day 1988, 6 AM, I woke up with acute appendicitis. The manager got me a “cab,” and we … Read more

Out of the Black and into the Blue: Diving to Stay Alive

By David, McGuire, Shark Stewards Floating, weightless, my eyes stare down into the impenetrable like the streaks of sunlight. Above me, the weight of one hundred feet of water is the blue Pacific. Ears ticking, throat constricting, my brain screams for oxygen. It is time to return to the surface, to the land of the … Read more

A Crisis Lurking Below the Surface Emergency Hyperbaric Treatment Availability

By Dan Orr (danorr@danorrconsulting.com) There are millions of recreational scuba divers in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands of traveling divers from countries around the world making tens of millions of enjoyable recreational dives each year in unique dive locations all over America. In the unlikely event that any of these divers would suffer a … Read more

Diving Dahab’s Real Blue Hole

1983: There was little or no infrastructure in the Sinai then. We traveled down the coast from the border with Israel by ancient battered Landcruiser and slept uncomfortably under the stars, battling the cold desert air with ineffective sleeping bags. Leaving the Bedouin guides on the rocky beach to build a fire for lunch, we … Read more