Issue no 1, 2000 -- English edition -- home
Page: -- Contents -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (7), 8
"I have used the Doctor Bank Poverty Fund to its limit, and beyond," reports Per Andrén, from Växjö, Sweden, from a second posting as jeep-doctor on the Ugunja line in Kenya. "There are many ways to do good with this money. In addition to the Doctor Bank fund, I received additional donations from friends and relatives. In total I had 7,800 Crowns." (about USD 900)
Then follows a list of 26 cases with patients that would otherwise not have received any help. Most of these were seriously ill who needed to be admitted for care at different hospitals, something that because of poverty they would not have had any chance to get.
This was the second time as jeep-doctor for Dr Andrén. "It was very intensive, with an average of 68 patients per day," he says, and praises the local staff members who after education may themselves someday take over the line.
"It is fun to work as jeep-doctor. The organization functions well. The work gives rise to many reflections. It is hard to understand that two so different worlds can co-exist. I hope they will come closer to each other. Perhaps this work, which in my opinion feels meaningful, can assist such an approach."
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Six fingers and six toes. |
"The picture shows a recently born girl, with six fingers and toes," writes surgeon Sven Lenninger, from Ystad, Sweden, who worked at Maseno Hospital in Kenya."Because of this witchcraft, the father had abandoned the family. Someone had tied string around the extra fingers of each hand, and when jeep-doctor Hannu Pösö took the girl to the hospital, the two fingers were of course infected. Under local anaesthesia, the two fingers were removed, along with the extra toes. The jeep-doctor drove the little patient home the same day. Follow-up a week later found the sores acceptably healed and the father back. A small action-but perhaps with great social consequences," ends Dr Lenninger this happy tale.
Kenya's president Moi has finally, probably pressured by conditions around a large British donation, declared AIDS as a national catastrophe and recommended the use of condoms. By this, he defies the strong Catholic Church and the Papal policy of abstention before marriage and no extramarital relations thereafter.
Dr Pia Appelgren, from Stockholm, Sweden, reports from the hospital in Mutomo, run by a Catholic order of nuns.
"The donation will hopefully mean great investment in information, mandatory education about AIDS in the schools, and an appeal for people to test themselves. The president urges the Catholic Church to change its negative attitude to condoms.
"The AIDS catastrophe throws a constant dark shadow over the activities at the hospital," continues Dr Appelgren. "To for example know that in the West we can now arrest the development of AIDS in children, by first giving a dose of medicine to the pregnant woman and another dose to the newly born infant, is extremely frustrating because this treatment is impossible here due to the cost."
Eye specialist Sture Nyholm and his wife Majvor, from Jakobstad, Finland, have again been in the war-torn southern Sudan, where 400 people, most of them blind, waited several days.
"We were this time able to examine 255 and operate on 125. This means that we must as soon as possible return to the 150 who waited in vain. Most of the operations succeeded, and the night after the bandages were removed, these formerly blind danced and glowed with happiness."
Unfortunately, Dr Nyholm's appeal in the previous issue of this newsletter did not produce results. This concerned help acquiring a laser, a Biometry machine and a Vitrector machine. Used such, which are at hospitals in the Nordic countries, would mean a lot for his work with restoring sight to the blind. You may correspond directly with Dr Sture Nyholm, P O Box 214, Wodanga, Vihega District, Kenya, or contact the Doctor Bank.
The doctor bank concept spreads. The governors of the 14 German Rotary districts decided last autumn to launch the German Rotary Volunteer Doctors (GRVD), modeled on the Scandinavian effort and aim of sending doctors and dentists into areas with inadequate medical services and training. The first local center of operations will be a hospital in Tanzania in East Africa from where the doctors will operate in an area of several hundred kilometres. The Rotary Foundation will finance the deployment of the doctors. 122 doctors have already applied, and the first two are going to work in the Amazon and in Ghana.
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Bertil Falk |
The film "The Doctor Bank's Africa" is Bertil Falk's fifth about the work of the doctors. With unmatched involvement, he followed the doctors in remote regions of Africa, often where no doctor before set foot. He describes adventurous travels with "jeep-doctors", who make their way even where no roads exist. He has seen gynaecologists save the lives of woman and children, surgeons perform advanced operations despite primitive conditions, orthopaedists give polio children a new life, ear specialists restore hearing to severely hearing-impaired, eye specialists make the blind see, and dentists save children's teeth and cure adult's toothaches.
VCR Cassettes (PAL):
- 145 Crowns to rent
- 200 Crowns (USD 23) to buy.
Order by telephone
- +46 (40) 978070
- fax +46 (40) 971170.
Email orders: doctor.bank@swipnet.se
(Exchange rate at time of writing: 1 USD (US dollar) approximately 8.60 SEK Swedish Crowns.)