The latest Colorado health-care facilities ’construction news is that University of Colorado Health (UCH) and Advent Health, two nonprofit hospital systems plan to build hospitals adjacent to one another in Broomfield, an area with more hospital beds than in most of America. We absolutely don’t need more hospitals in this area and I wish the old CON (Certificate of Need) law was still alive. Still the good folks of Broomfield will have to untangle this knot.

Meanwhile, one hospital in Denver, with little fanfare, continues to shine, with steady excellence that has made it not only a regional but national star in trauma care among other endeavors. Denver Health has distinguished itself by taking care of the indigent and uninsured. It is not often that a public institution stands out in the way Denver Health has. I have been an admirer of the hospital where several acquaintances have been doing exceptional work over the decades on a shoestring budget. Compared to its older 20th century look, Denver Health has taken on a brighter sheen in the 21st century. There is a new more welcoming architectural feel; something I have been able to intuit driving down Speer Blvd or east on Sixth Avenue.

I recently visited its Travel Medicine Clinic and was quite surprised both by the efficiency and kindness I encountered. The medications and treatment I received for my African travel were competently given and prescribed. It is often these small bright corners of an institution that remind us that the larger whole can’t function without them. What intrigued me about the clinic was that it didn’t have to advertise; I heard about it through the word of mouth, which has greater significance than anything else.

I have witnessed some imaginative work of a few physicians who have taken upon themselves the burden of treating abused and maltreated women. A small number of immigrant women of some African and Middle East countries find their way to Denver Health for management of complications of female genital mutilation, FGM, an inhumanely abhorrent practice that is still performed this late in human history.

There are four types of FGM, all of them horrific and dehumanizing to their poor young innocent subjects. How do you describe the removal of a young girl’s clitoris or clitoris and labia? Or infibulation, when the vaginal orifice is stitched together in addition to clitoridectomy. Barbaric and inhumane might fit the description. Three physicians at Denver Health have been helping women who underwent the horrific abuse as young girls or as babies.

These women’s problems include painful coitus, lack of sexual enjoyment; dangerous and difficult parturition, and deep psychological problems. The treatment aims to repair the injury by removing scar tissues, including those around the amputated clitoris, and enlarging the vaginal opening, among other procedures. But perhaps most importantly: restoration of the victims ’human dignity. I think FGM is meant to destroy young girls ’self-respect and any desire to ever enjoy sex.

It was with humility that I talked to the three doctors at Denver Health about their work. Like many physicians who pursue their calling — not for the dazzling TV appearances, the mansions

they own — the surgeons who reconstruct the bodies of women wantonly deformed by tribal customs in dark spaces of the world are to me deserving of society’s highest accolades. And of course they don’t trumpet their work to the world to hear and see. I had to seek them out because I heard of their work by word-of-mouth. They deserve much more than this newsprint space for what they do, what they accomplish.

I am also indebted to Denver Health and its health clinics because at the outset of my medical career in Denver they gave me the opportunity to eke out a few dollars working at both Eastside clinic and the old Federal Boulevard clinic, serving the uninsured — both African-Americans of Five points and the Hispanic and Native Americans of Denver’s Westside.

Denver Health’s vaunted Level One trauma service owes its standing to the likes of Dr. Ernest Moore. Suffice it to say that Denverites have no idea what great work is done there. To watch the competing giants of America’s healthcare system is sometimes dizzying and discombobulating. It is wisest to take in a deep breath and acknowledge the truly humane, kind and soulful work that’s done in the narrow spaces of as humble an institution as Denver Health.

Pius Kamau, M.D., a retired general surgeon, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and an activist for minority students ‘STEM education. He is a National Public Radio commentator, a Huffington Post blogger, a past columnist for Denver dailies and is featured on the podcast, “Never Again.”