Caring for other people, especially those in need, is a good and noble pursuit.

We received an email this week from Helen Lounsbury, a retired Berne-Knox-Westerlo teacher and school board member, always eager to point out the good works of BKW graduates. She linked us to a blog by Caitlin Parks who is caring for women in a Kenyan clinic — something she has wanted to do for as long as she can remember, Parks writes.

Parks describes Dr. Joe Mamlin who, with his wife Sarah Ellen, has worked in Kenya for more than 15 years, founding AMPATH — the Academic Model for Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS — which helps with research and training as well as care for Kenyans struck with the AIDS epidemic.

Parks wrote on Sunday of two pharmacies at the clinic — one stocked by the government that is often out of even basic medications and another funded by the community, “which has very cheap meds,” ensuring that patients can take life-sustaining medications continuously.

The glimpse she gives of those in need is as startling as it is stark. Parks describes HIV-positive patients, ranging in age from 19 to 82. She tells the story of a woman who came to Dr. Mamlin near death, pregnant and suffering from untreated HIV and bacterial infection. “Her family wouldn’t pay for her to be hospitalized,” Parks writes, “so Dr. Mamlin admitted her anyway and paid for her care until she improved.... She came in today with her beautiful 4-year-old daughter who is HIV negative!”

Not all the clinic’s patients are so fortunate. Parks describes a 25-year-old woman who looks to be 40, wasting away to 80 pounds with infection and pneumonia, and possibly tuberculosis. “Today,” writes Parks on Sept. 7, “the lab was unable to test viral loads for us because they didn’t have the necessary tubes in which to collect the blood. This is because the supply chain has been interrupted by recent political changes....But we were able to do chest x-rays.” The x-rays were not run through computers; rather, with film and a light box.

Wealth in the world is unequal. Developing countries like Kenya have neither the resources nor the stability to provide the kind of services to which citizens of the United States have become accustomed. We salute Americans like Joe Mamlin and Caitlin Parks who make personal sacrifices to help bridge the gap. Against such great odds, saving a single life — the birth of a baby who at 4 is healthy — is a small miracle, and one worth celebrating.

But let us not be smug that Americans, here in the land of plenty, this land of vast medical technology and abundant expertise, are safe. We wrote this summer of a fundraiser, a poker run, hosted by the Helderberg Post of the American Legion that raised $16,000 to help homeless veterans.

Hurrah for the motorcycle mavericks, the men and women who take to the open road in their leather vests and helmets, with red, white, and blue flags waving from their bikes. “They run together,” said Steve Oliver of serving in the military and riding with the legion members.  Oliver served with the Navy Seabees for a decade and is a founder of the American Legion riders. “It’s a family,” he said.

This year, all the money raised at the legion event went to Soldier On, a not-for-profit group that helps homeless veterans; a facility is planned for Albany County. Founder John “Jack” Downey told the county legislature he has dedicated his life to helping veterans struggling with homelessness and substance abuse.

We salute Downey along with groups like the local American Legion; they, too, are filling a gap just like Mamlin and Parks. But why should there be such a gap here in the United States?

As Downey well knows, there is a strong link between substance abuse and homelessness. A disproportionate number of United States veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and substance abuse problems just as a disproportionate number of homeless people in America are veterans — about 10 percent of adults in the United States are veterans yet they make up 15 percent of America’s homeless.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs has a catchy slogan: You Fought for Our Home. We’ll Fight for Yours.

The slogan is not enough. The problem is complex. Many veterans in need don’t seek help. We urge them to do so; they’ve earned it. Starting treatment is a phone call away.

In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about one in 10 returning soldiers seen by Veterans Affairs has a problem with alcohol or other drugs. Part of the illness of alcoholism is not recognizing or admitting a problem.

One of the veterans who lives in the Soldier On complex in Pittsfield, Massachusetts told us why that program works for him. “It’s a brothership between vets,” Paul Bullman told our reporter, Marcello Iaia. “I can sit down and talk to another vet better than I can sit down and talk to somebody on the outside.”

Bullman, who had been without a home for more than a decade, attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and has a mentor. He got into drinking and drugs after his wife died in 1997, starting him on what he called a “downward spiral.” Bullman said that part of the solution is he no longer spends time around people who are drinking.

While Veterans Affairs offers a wide variety of treatments for substance abuse, many of those released from treatment end up homeless again.  On any one given night, about 107,000 veterans are homeless, according to the 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. That is 107,000 too many.

We’re glad Bullman has been able to turn around his life with the help of Soldier On. That, too, is a miracle to be celebrated. It is wonderful and laudable that Joe Mamlin would personally pay for a pregnant woman’s care or that Jack Downey would found a facility that helps a veteran in need.

But it doesn’t let our government off the hook. We may shake our heads over a government-run pharmacy in Kenya that can’t supply needed drugs or a clinic that can’t run lab tests, but how much better are we in America if we let our veterans suffer? Is our government using the equivalent of a light box for an x-ray when Soldier On has found a better way?

We are a democratic republic, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. As a nation, we send soldiers off to war. Some of them die. Others return with physical or mental wounds. We are responsible for their well being; it is our solemn duty.

As citizens, we pay taxes, providing funds that should pay not only for war, if we wage it, but for the successful rehabilitation of those who have served in war. We owe our veterans no less.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer