Issue no 1, 2000 -- English edition -- home
Page: -- Contents -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, (6), 7, 8
Doctor of infectious diseases Sven Montelius, from Eskilstuna, Sweden, made his fourth trip for the Doctor Bank to Gamboula, RCA. Much can happen on the ground, but in the air…
"My effort as doctor started already over the Sahara. A request for a doctor came over the cabin PA system. It turned out to be an older woman who had various symptoms. Her legs were like ice and were painful, her throat pulled and her back ached. I diagnosed anxiety and suggested a tablet of Valium. However, the flight captain then became at least as agonized. He had once had a passenger who had been given Valium by injection, and who had died. The captain has the medical responsibility for the passengers, and this captain had great fear for Valium. The woman finally got half a tablet of 5 mg. This of course helped not at all. She was alive when we debarked, but said she was exhausted. That I can understand."
"The hospital, which is run by the local Baptist Church, has a number of problems. Greatest is the terrible financial state. Salaries have not been paid on time. Subsidies from Sweden are not enough, and people can't afford to pay for the care they receive. The only thing people can earn money on is to grow coffee or tobacco, but they are paid only once a year, and that money doesn't go far. It stands more and more clear that the local economy of rural Africa can't cover the cost of a hospital without support from outside."
"Despite all the difficulties, there is much in Africa that is positive and good," says Dr Montelius. "This is probably the reason why one loses a part of one's heart here with people who look at life with happiness and humor, and are generous even though they have nothing. Some of the African nurses are indefatigable. For my part, I could relieve a worn and tired colleague, who received a month's leave thanks to the Doctor Bank."
|
Even here come the Rotary Doctors, the Doctor Bank jeep-doctors, to people who never before could visit a doctor. |
"It is a balm for me to get away from the Swedish bureaucracy and travel to Africa to help."
So said Dr Henning Engberg, from Malung, Sweden, when interviewed by a local newspaper. He got involved in the Doctor Bank in 1991, and has repeatedly gone out as Rotary doctor since then. Now he had been jeep-doctor on the Homa Bay line by Lake Victoria. He continued in the interview:
"Compensation for the effort is the gratitude that meets us, and the results achieved with modest means. It is shocking to see the conditions in which many live. To our receptions come people who have walked over 30 km to get help. Then it feels especially meaningful to do the work.
"Dysentery in one form or another was almost as common as malaria. People drink water from polluted rivers and lakes, and often suffer diarrhea."
This is why the Doctor Bank invests heavily in Water for Life. The clinics on the Homa Bay line will get wells. Some are already being dug.
"The lack of company was marked, especially at night when the malaria mosquitoes forced me indoors. I spent the first weekends there, partly because I had myself contracted malaria,"
reports jeep-doctor Jören Tyllström, from Stockholm, Sweden. He worked at the Homa Bay line in Kenya.
"Malaria is the overshadowing problem in this region, both for residents and the Doctor Bank doctors. A serious issue is that malaria prophylactics and treatments turn out not to work with acceptable safety margins."
This is why the Doctor Bank invests heavily in primarily raising funds for mosquito nets for children, the only safe protection.
Don't give aid that goes straight in as budget support in a developing country's treasury. This seemingly self-evident admonishment is in the criticism of Sweden by an international study that says the aid reaches the wrong people. Sweden has invested too little in combating poverty.
The Doctor Bank, which receives insignificant state support, takes the opposite approach by never giving away money, but instead preventing and curing disease under the motto: "People with disease cannot accomplish development -- healthy people can".
The tireless Curt Tilly, of the Marks RC in Kinna, Sweden, reports that sales of towels, to be concluded after three years, will in this final year yield a contribution to the Doctor Bank of about 120,000 Swedish Crowns (USD 14,000).
Mr Tilly wishes to thank all who have contributed to this great Rotary effort, and the Doctor Bank thanks Marks Rotary Club and Curt Tilly!
Add to this about 120,000 crowns, which was the contribution from the club's jazz concert.
The hospital in Garissa, Kenya, where the Doctor Bank runs a surgeon relay since 1989, is designed for 33 doctor postings. Only a single local doctor works there.
After two months there in the autumn of 1999, surgeon Göran Hambraeus, from Bjärred, Sweden, returned in February of this year.
"This one doctor, a Somalian from the region, is a great asset. But he is sagging under his enormous workload, and is understandably thinking of finding other callings. No matter how hard he tries to meet the unreasonable demands and expectations that pile up, he is criticized for things it is impossible to find time to do. There are only 600 official doctor positions in all of this large land, and this includes the doctors that have purely administrative tasks. We see no improvements in this situation. It seems more difficult to get doctors to Garissa than to anywhere else in the country."
The Doctor Bank jeep-doctors participate in Rotary's large project Polio Plus. From the Mashuru jeep relay among the Masai, Dr Flemming Lyrdal, from Eksjö, Sweden, reports that he in addition to the daily receptions with his wife and local assistants vaccinated 1100 children and gave 560 Vitamin A.