Issue no 3, 2000 -- English edition -- home
Page: -- Contents -- 1, 2, 3, (4), 5, 6, 7, 8
Look at the pictures here. The left one shows little Kevin, age 2½, in the poor region East of Lake Victoria in Kenya. This is how jeep-doctor Yngve Plym Forsell and surgeon Britten Klöfver Ståhl found him. Without treatment it’s unlikely that he would have survived more than a few months. Now he’s fully recovered (picture at right).
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Dr Plym Forsell, who also took the pictures, tells the story:
“This malign tumour usually afflicts children and develops very rapidly. It was first described by the English doctor Dennis Burkitt in 1998. Burkitt associates the tumour with Epstein-Barr´s virus, which is in the West mainly known to cause infectious mononucleosis (gland fever or ‘kissing disease’). However, in malaria infested regions, the virus evidently instead causes this kind of tumour. This condition is seen only in tropical countries with much malaria.When Britten and I saw this little boy, his tumour had manifested only a month earlier. This gives some indication of how incredibly fast it grows. Thankfully, like many other lymphatic tumours, it is extremely responsive to cytotoxic treatment. We took him to Maseno Hospital, where with support from the Doctor Bank Poverty Fund, he could have a series of treatments.
“Each day something happened which, if we had not been there, would have caused a patient to die.” Nurse-anaesthetist Gunilla Andersson, from Aneby, Sweden, said this in an interview for a local newspaper after returning from her fourth stay in Kenya for the Doctor Bank.
This time she worked in a team with ear specialists Helge Lyckberg, from Karlstad, and Eva Nilsén, from Bodö.
“We went to three different hospitals and helped people with problems in ear, nose and throat. When working in this way, you really feel that you are saving lives.”
But the problems in Kenya are enormous in other ways as well.
“It hasn’t rained for two years. It’s worst in the soutwestern regions, and in the eastern areas, where they usually get three harvests, there is this year only one. In addition, the drinking water, which has been saved in large dams since the last rain season, is beginning to run out, and the rivers are going dry. The lack of water is also causing a lack of electricity, causing great problems during operations.”
In 2005, Zambia will have 1 million orphaned children, an average demographic age down to 47, and 85 percent of the population trying to survive on less than a US dollar a day. Impure water and inadequate protection against malaria are the prime causes of disease and death.
This gloomy picture is painted in Zambia by Göran and Sylvia Norén, from Kinna, Sweden. They are Doctor Bank veterans after working in different African countries since 1988. The report shows essentially no development in the country despite large amounts of foreign aid, also from Sweden.
“The hospital in Chikankata, run by the Salvation Army, where we have worked many times, is comparable to an older Swedish hospital,” says Göran Norén, “with three full-time doctors and one part-time. Furthermore, the hospital’s standard has gone down due to reduced state funding, and there is a great lack of medicines.”
The Doctor Bank has much to do everywhere in what we call the third world. We wish we could do more – and we will, with increased resources.
“It’s harder to come home than to go away. Many actually important things tend to feel unimportant. At the same time, I’m happy to have received a broader perspective on life. Maybe one can be a little more content with what one has...”
These are some of the reflections that Dr Lars Seligman, from Mölndal in Sweden, makes in a large interview in a daily newspaper (GP) after returning from a period as jeep-doctor in Kenya.
“Some of the Doctor Bank outreach clinics are in extremely impoverished areas. It wasn’t unusual for patients to have travelled for many hours, on foot or by bicycle. Often a man would come cycling with his wife, holding a sick child on the package holder.”
“It was foremost the sick children that affected Dr Seligman,” writes GP’s reporter, Madelen Hansson. “They were so many, often suffering unnecessarily. He thinks it self-evident to go out again, not just because he feels he has a debt to pay, but because he feels that it is the right thing to do.”