"bringing doctors and patients together to provide healing, health,
and
hope to some of the Africa's poorest people."
Working through the Catholic Xaverian Missionaries and the Catholic Diocese of Makeni in Sierra Leone, we have been getting relief for some of the many people there in need of surgery. Since January 2003, Through our efforts: over 250 men, boys, and even some women have received treatment for their disabling hernias, one man with a huge elephantiasis scrotum has been cured and surgically repaired, a medical team including two OBG/YN surgeons has surgically treated 24 women with various conditions, 28 people have had sight restored through cataract surgery at a Baptist eye hospital. One of these was a woman who had been blind for 13 years. All of this has been done at medical facilities within Sierra Leone including the St. John of God Catholic Hospital and the recently built Holy Spirit Catholic Hospital, both in the diocese of Makeni. The Manhattan based Metropolitan Health and Human Rights Foundation (MHHRF) has been joining us in this effort by helping to fund over 200 of the hernia repairs. We have also been providing some medicines, supplies, equipment, and monetary support to the newly established Holy Spirit Hospital to help it meet the needs of its many patients. We have been providing some funding for medicines to the Loreto Health Clinic run by the Catholic Missionary Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny. With our funds, the clinic medically stabilizes victims of epilepsy to prevent their having seizures, along with providing many other much needed health services including pre and post natal care.
A good start has been made but the number of farmers, villagers and other impoverished working people presenting us with their medical and surgical needs continues to grow.
Sierra Leone Surgical Effort
Sierra Leone, a West African country of five million people, has only four orthopedic surgeons practicing in limited capacities. A brutal 11-year civil war, which ended in Jan. 2002, saw the looting and destruction of almost every medical facility in the country. Even before the war, Sierra Leone was one of Africa's poorest nations. There is no facility there where complex spinal surgeries can be performed. Persons born with a condition such as a severe scoliosis of the spine, or who contract Pott's disease, have no hope for effective treatment in Sierra Leone.
Pott's disease is a form of tuberculosis that settles in the victim's spine. There it weakens one or more vertebrae. The spine eventually fractures causing chronic pain. The victims can loose the use of their lower bodies as they gradually become paralyzed below the point of fracture.
I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone right before and during the beginning of the war. I regularly travel there now, with the help of the Knights of Columbus (KOC) council 359, to aid surgeons, physicians and medical mission teams. In 2003 and 2004 I sent a young man with a severe scoliosis and two young girls, ages seven and eight, with Pott's disease, from Sierra Leone to the neighboring country of Ghana where they received surgical treatment by a medical mission team, the Foundation of Orthopedic and Complex Spine (FOCOS). The young man was almost to the point of being unable to breathe. He had two metal rods inserted to straighten his back. The girls, who had lost the ability to stand and to walk on their own, had the use of their legs restored as a result of pressure being removed from their spinal chords. Since then we have sent 26 more patients with Pott's disease or scoliosis from Sierra Leone to Ghana where they received emergency surgery from FOCOS. They have returned to recover in their native Sierra Leone. FOCOS was founded and is headed by Oheneba Boachie-Adjei, M.D., who practices at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. He and his team of about 20 medical professionals make three or more mission trips each year to Ghana and to Barbados in the Caribbean. To learn more about FOCOS visit their Website at: orthofocos.org.
The FOCOS team operates for free, but the hospital in Ghana has to charge for their services. Their fees come to about $6,000 per patient. I have been paying for half of these fees (FOCOS has generously covered the other half) as well as for air fare, lodging, and other travel expenses with my own money and with what funds I have been able to raise from friends, family, the KOC, the Good Shepherd Foundation, and through my church. There are currently over 70 more patients with Pott's disease or scoliosis awaiting our funding for surgical treatment.
