Joelle Pouliot was a nurse with a comfortable life in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Then she volunteered for a 6-week stint with Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders. They told her to pack her bag and be ready for their phonecall. When a crisis happened she would have to catch a plane within 24 hours -- they'd tell her the destination when they phoned. She arranged a temporary leave-of-absence from her government job and packed her bag. When the call came she found herself headed to Uganda - a country where there is one doctor for every 25,000 people, where the average life expectancy is 41 years. 3 out of 5 Ugandans don’t have access to clean drinking water. Cholera spreads through contaminated water. Joelle Pouliot was on her way to fight a cholera epidemic. Packed in with the syringes and antibiotics in her bag was a small tape recorder for keeping an audio diary of her experience. This is that diary.
							Medecins Sans Frontieres was founded by a group of French doctors in 1971. It is an independent organisation that sends its volunteers anywhere in the world -- fast -- whenever it learns of an humanitarian crisis. Men and women leave their comfortable sinecures in North America and Europe to heal the sick in mud-floored clinics and plastic-sheeted tents under often savage and dangerous conditions. They risk disease and sometimes death threats from local warlords. In the midst of plagues, famines, and floods they calmly go about their business, sleeping little and eating hurriedly, for the recompense of an airline ticket, free room and board, and a small MSF salary of a few hundred dollars per month. Last year 2500 volunteers served in MSF's emergency missions in 84 countries.
		Cholera Diary was produced by Chris Brookes for the Homelands Productions series "World Views" Voice: Joelle Pouliot Mix: Chris Brookes Editor: Sandy Tolan Music: Geoffrey Ureyema from "Exile"
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