Issue no 2, 1999 -- English edition -- home
Page: -- Contents -- 1, 2, (3), 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
| Some of the patients that were waiting when "Dr Sture" came to Akobo in Sudan. |
Eye specialist Dr Sture Nyholm from Jakobstad, Finland, whom readers of News from the Rotary Doctor Bank know since many years, reports so regularly and detailed from Sudan and Kenya that we feel as if we were with him and his wife Majvor. From his latest trip to Sudan, he writes:
"We travel with full equipment, including operating table, chair, generator and microscope. This means we can perform high quality surgery of European standard deep in the African bush. The results are also very satisfying. Most of those operated for cataracts and given artificial lens implants receive restored vision for the rest of their lives."
Dr Sture Nyholm was able to return to two places in Sudan, Ikotos and Akobo, where the Doctor Bank sent him already in 1991 and again for several weeks in 1998.
"Now I was able to follow up in Ikotos the work that had been initiated under Doctor Bank supervision. Both locations need much help with respect to eye ailments. There are hundreds of thousands of blind people that need eye surgery. We were able to operate 120 during two weeks, but this is still but a drop in the ocean."
In his previous report, Sture Nyholm wrote about Renato, a man who had been operated in one eye, but came too late to have the other one operated as well.
"Our friend Renato had waited for us for three weeks, and now popped up out of a hut. With him, he had a friend, who of course also needed surgery. Both were operated with very good results."
"We met a number of old friends in Ikotos, that is to say patients who had been operated in one eye and now came to have the other one operated. Our friend Isederio, who had previously been operated on in both eyes, visited us almost daily. He was always at hand whenever anything happened in the village. When someone dies, he digs the grave, and when it is time for a wedding, he is also there. It is really a joy to see this man today, who was previously totally blind and the first time he came walked straight into an iron gate so that he bled copiously from the face."
"To see Akobo again after eight years was moving in many ways. Many in the village remembered me as Dr Sture. No eye specialist had been there since then. On the hospital grounds, there were crowds of blind people, at least 200. We managed 55 operations in three days."Unfortunately, I became very ill at the end. Much was due to exhaustion. We had no place to sleep and were assigned a tiny tent, which we could barely enter crawling on all fours."
Before leaving Sudan, they could also hand over to the Christian parish there a large shipment of bibles in the native language Nuer - a very appreciated gift.
By publication time, Sture and Majvor Nyholm will have been to Sudan yet another time, and this summer they return to Finland:
"We plan to build an extension to my mother's house…"
However, only a week or so later, they return yet again to Sudan and Kenya, where blind people and many others wait for them.
"After the first week with some relief, followed a month with intense heat and not a drop of rain. The temperature stayed between 38C and 40C in the shade at midday."One of the hottest days, we were for the first time to give vaccinations and maternal care in the clinic at Oldorko. Once there, it turned out that the key to the clinic was missing. The schoolteacher offered the use of the school instead. Under the tin roof in sauna heat, we then tried to organize ourselves. It was an indescribable sight with representatives from the Health Committee and patients who had come in the belief that we had ordinary reception. Now we had 35 mothers with one or more children, 10 expecting mothers accompanied by their children, and in addition many curious visitors.
"By 4 P.M. I started directing patients and staff in Swedish, until my interpreter quietly remarked that 'Dr Kalle is a bit confused'. I think that heat stroke was near…"
"Dr Kalle", who got confused in the heat, is Dr Wallén in normal situations, from Falun in Sweden, and wrote this when he returned home after acting as jeep-doctor among the Masai, working out of a base by Lake Magadi. He also reports that conditions are favourable for setting up a well functioning mobile clinic in this region.
Dentist Hans Klänge, from Huskvarna, Sweden, with extensive experience of work in Africa, starts his report from Mutomo with the question "How will it go for Kenya, and for Africa in general?"
"In the newspaper Daily Nation we read every day about corruption, absolute power and power misuse, debt crisis and lack of money, unpaid salaries, great deficiencies in infrastructure, wide-spread poverty, high rate of crime, tribal conflicts, increasing analphabetism, etc. I had expected Kenya to be better developed and less impoverished."
There are many reasons to be concerned about Kenya, and about a large number of other African states. Kenya has however been spared from civil war, but poverty has increased so that it is reported that 10 million Kenyans live under the "poverty line". In spite of this, I do not feel one should see all as hopeless, even though as one of our doctors wrote, corruption is the only thing that really works. During a recent visit in Kenya, I met young Kenyans who were not at all pessimistic. They meant that when a new generation of well-educated men and women take over power, this at bottom rich country will not only survive, but thrive.
This may be hard to believe today, but we may always hope, and meanwhile the Doctor Bank will continue to improve people's health. This much we know: people who suffer disease cannot accomplish development, but those that are healthy can.