Can you do medical missions at home? Is it possible, even healthier, to fulfill your visions via service to people in your midst? “Yes absolutely,” responds Colette Fleming, pediatrician at Samuel Rogers Health Center. “I want to do a medical mission trip to Haiti. Here, on the other hand, I immerse myself everyday among […]
My heroes: Wendy & Greg Nyhus. I joined them in 2010 at Baptist Med Center in northern Ghana, where they coordinated the host of international volunteers and established a chicken farm to support the orphanage, both by providing food to eat and eggs to sell. Before they ever met, Greg was the business
This moment I am writing from Angola in southern Africa where I work each summer. Volunteering here requires a significant personal, emotional, and financial investment. Is it right for YOU? Let’s dissect the outcomes you would expect from a term in Africa and explore whether such a venture is in your future: You will
The photo above is the upper tibia of Ezekiel – the mature man about whom I wrote on Angola Day 23. The black cavity is the space from where four days earlier we excised the necrotic bone of osteomyelitis. What’s left is a thin remnant of bone on the posterior surface of his tibia.
Emergency patients I saw today at Hospital Cristo Rei: a lady five months pregnant with interuterine fetal demise – very sad, an elderly man with starvation and end stage tuberculosis barely breathing, a fellow my age with a sudden stroke and hemiplegia, a one-year old with pneumonia no better after three weeks of treatment,
What’s the most vulnerable minute in person’s entire life? The very first minute following birth. During those few seconds the baby must transition from receiving oxygen from the mother via umbilical cord to clearing its own airways, starting respiration, and quickly shunting blood to lungs for the first time. Many children fail to survive
Today I was making inpatient rounds at Hospital Cristo Rei when I overheard, “I’m so glad God allowed me to contract leprosy, because it’s only here in treatment that I learned about Jesus. All those ‘healthy’ people in my town – they still know nothing of God’s mercy.” Such a stunning statement! Our normal,
Maria, the eight-month old in this photo, has been coughing for two weeks. She arrived here at Hospital Cristo Rei on the same day as I. Maria was breathing heavily, coughing constantly, and her chest demonstrated every sign of pneumonia. Her chest X-ray showed the right upper lung saturated with infection. Were she in
Senhor Eduardo was riding his tiny motor cycle down one of Angola’s “unimproved” roads when he struck a pot hole and landed on a boulder. What results was the injury in this X-ray above. Most concerning is that this fracture occurred five months ago. Eduardo was treated with 3 months flat on his back
Looks like a modern eye center in North America, doesn’t it? Actually, I took this photo today in Benguela, Angola – home of the Boa Vista Eye Center. Boa Vista was launched in about 1994 by my Swiss colleague for Kalukembe Hospital, Urs Pedro Bierly. Today it is lead by John Clements, a Board-certified,