Pam Zinkin, a single mother with two sons, went to the newly independent Mozambique in 1977 to work as a pediatrician. The originally planned six-month stay was extended to five years. After independence from Portugal in 1975, 80% of doctors left, necessitating a rebuilding of the health system. Zinkin became the head of pediatrics at the hospital in Maputo. With the team, she reduced the death rate among 8,000 admitted children under 8 from 30% to 4%. She instituted the practice of having mothers or other family members stay with the babies in the hospital, helping to reduce the death rate. She taught them hygiene and nutrition because they were previously considered "unclean" and "unhygienic". She also redesigned the pediatric medicine curriculum to make it more relevant to the local context, including the teaching of infectious diseases.