This is the cruel calculus of extreme poverty. It felt almost inhuman to look away from an individual dying child in front of me and toward hundreds of anonymous dying children I could not see. I remember the words of Ingegerd Rooth, who had been working as a missionary nurse in Congo and Tanzania before she became my mentor. She always told me, “In the deepest poverty you should never do anything perfectly. If you do you are stealing resources from where they can be better used.”
