A FACE OF MALAWI  Sunday, April 11, 2011

This child has AIDS. His red hair is indicative of malnutrition. He is taking antiretroviral (ARV) medications. As long as he takes his medication, gets nutrition in the form of ‘Plumpy nut’ or vitamin-enriched Lunda Phala Flour, and gets his immunizations, he can grow up to become a productive and happy adult.  His mother also has AIDS. It is hard for her to walk the 8 kilometers to the Health Centre every month.  The delivery of ‘Plumpy nut’ to her village will soon stop. She does not sleep under a malaria net. Mom and child will likely get malaria every year and wait until they are very sick to go to the Hospital.

Despite new medical supplies in the Hospital and despite ARV meds being paid for by the government, people do not have the education nor the logistic ability to take good care of themselves and their families. This is so frustrating to me, that I have asked myself many times if I am really making any difference. I do believe that saving one person is as important as saving a village. And, thus, I will continue to do as much as I can in the time I have left on this planet to improve and prolong the lives of those less fortunate than I am.

I am now back in Phoenix.

Dr. Helen

BEING INTERVIEWED BY PRESS AND RADIO  Thursday, May 31, 2011

We spent the night at the US State Department-owned home of Ben and Ania in the upper class neighborhood of Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. It was a glorious evening and definitely worth my taxpayer dollars. The grounds, maintained by a full-time gardener, are exquisite. The garden is sufficient to supply multiple families with enough fresh herbs and vegetables.

The next morning we went to Ben’s office. He is the Public Affairs’ Officer. He arranged for a reporter from Zodiac radio and from The Nation newspaper to interview me about St. Martin’s Hospital, Project CURE’s container, and my vision for the future of healthcare in rural Malawi. The interview lasted over an hour. Simkonda answered questions in Chechewa.  The 7-minute radio clipped was aired the next morning . St. Martin’s started to get phone calls for scheduling ultrasounds.

NKHOMA MISSION HOSPITAL  Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Jenn Wall of Africa Burn Relief has done an amazing job making the Burn Centre at Nkhoma Mission Hospital among the best in the country. She is an American who has been working in Malawi for the past four years. Her nonprofit has collected all the necessary equipment, including a dermatomes and skin meshers, used to perform skin grafting.

Simkonda has experience in skin grafting but no tools. Jenn offered him a skin mesher (expensive machine from the US), blades, and other tools. We all took a breathtaking scenic  4-hour journey through the mountains to Nkhoma. Jenn gave Simkonda a workshop on pigs’ legs using the instruments and mesher. We are good to go at St. Martin’s!

Nkhoma Hospital, which also contains one of Malawi’s prominent Eye Centres, is a great example of the benefit of donations in teaching resident healthcare workers to care for themselves. Dutch, German, British, Chinese and American donors have donated wings and machines. They have remained onsite from construction start to finish, and trained healthcare workers to become self-sufficient.

DISTRIBUTION AND USE OF SUPPLIES  Tuesday, March 29, 2011

I enjoyed coming back to our little house on the lake, with a minimum of electricity and running water. Our cook, James’ rice, beans, tomatoes and onions dish is still the best. There is nothing like living from sunrise to sunset, reading by flashlight and getting enough sleep. Even bathing in the lake has become cautiously acceptable.

We are spending our days introducing workers to the supplies. I assisted Simkunda, the clinical superintendent, with performing an inguinal hernia repair. We used a donated surgical tray, new blood pressure cuff, and wore new scrubs and operating gowns. Simkunda is instructing me on surgical techniques, and I am teaching him about diabetes, hypertension and reading EKGs. The hospital is blessed that he has had training and experience with ultrasound.

We are beginning to set up the electrical equipment using the step down generators that we purchased in the States. The dental chair supplied by Project CURE moves in all directions with a push of the buttons. Many have never seen anything like this, and the chair is being used by all (even Patrick).

We have designed a structure for the generator. Patrick has negotiated with a local contractor and funded the construction which will start immediately. Being onsite surely speeds along progress.

CAPE MACLEAR  Sunday, March 27, 2011

After experiencing the illness and poverty at the HIV/AIDS outreach clinic on Friday morning, Jean, Pat, Jerrold and I headed off for a weekend retreat at Cape MaClear to meet Pat’s son, Ben, and family. Ben works for the U.S. State Department.  Cape Maclear is a small fishing village on Nankumba Peninsula on the west side of Lake Malawi.

We stayed in luxury in the Danforth Yachting Club/Lodge – hot showers, excellent meals, boating and other water activities.  The owners, Howard and Michelle, have done a wonderful job of supporting the community by paying teacher and police salaries, creating solar energy, and training chefs and other trades.

Although I enjoyed every moment of the comfort, the dichotomy between the western lifestyle and the suffering of the rural Malawians, gnawed on my consciousness.

HIV/AIDS OUTREACH CLINIC  Friday, March 25, 2011

Stepped out of bed this morning into a flood throughout our house. There was no running water yesterday. We kept checking and accidentally left our faucets turned on before we went to sleep the night before. What a mess! Again, we were lucky that the day before we moved the 22 transformers out of our house into the hospital.

The past few days have been devastatingly hot. We have not had electricity nor running water. It is not possible for me to do much after lunch. The question has been whether or not to cool off or bath in Lake Malawi which has Bilharzia (Schistosomiasis), a disease causes by a parasite.

I left with Evance by ambulance at 8 AM to ARV (anti-retroviral) Outreach Cinic. The clinic is held 35 km away, reached by mostly dirt road, in a former Roman Catholic Health Centre. We were greeted by hundreds of recently diagnosed and long-term HIV positive/AIDS patients, mostly women and children,  waiting for their medication and for counseling. Before the mobile clinic opened this past December, the patients were required to travel to St. Martin’s Hospital on foot. Many stopped traveling so far because of illness. This is a wonderful pilot program set up by CDC and funded by USAID to increase the diagnosis and treatment  in rural Malawi. Lay persons have been trained to go to the villages to draw blood for testing of HIV. Health care workers have been given motorcycles to travel to remote sites to evaluate the patients who have stopped coming to clinic.

MZUZU SPECIALTY COFFEE  Thursday, March 24, 2011

“OUR COFFEE AND YOUR HEALTH

Muzuza coffee will contribute the following to your body

*Improves Mental performance *Improves Alertness *Improves Athletic Performance *Reduces the risk of lever cancer *Reduces the risk of Diabetes *Reduces the Organization of gallstone *Protects from the development of Parkinson Disease *Protects from colds…………

Dear Customer,

Research is what makes people discover things. Mzuzu Coffee planters Corporative

Union discovered thatb coffee is essential forv health.

Take it as necessity STOP! Consumming it for pleasure”

Above taken directly from the label.

BACK TO CLINICAL WORK  Monday, March 21, 2011

Today I met a lovely  medical attendant at the hospital. We will call her Marie. She is 35 and has several children. She continues to have multiple pelvic-related symptoms. She was diagnosed with cervical dysplasia by biopsy many years ago. When she was referred to and travelled a long distance to Queen Elizabeth (QE) Hospital in Blantyre for a hysterectomy, they instead decided to do a Pap smear. Pap smears are not available outside of the larger medical centers. Results often take 6 weeks to return. In Marie’s case, they lost the specimen. She has had no followup. Cervical cancer is very common in Malawi. Five cases in advanced stages have been diagnosed at St. Martin’s in the past month.

The clinical cases I saw today include severe skin reaction to one of the antiviral drugs treating AIDS, a foot ulcer that has spread into the bone and a huge scrotal abscess. I debrided the ulcer, and one of the clinical officers drained the abscess.

I watched the normal delivery of twin girls. Maternal and fetal health are improving in Malawi. A few years ago, Malawi was #1 in the world for maternal death. The government now strongly discourages birthing in the villages. Thus, more women are delivering in health centres and hospitals

Organizing and storing the 1000 boxes has now been taken over by Jerrold, Jean and Pat. Finding room for them in storage has been a formidable task. Hospital employees  congregate around the gazebo to move the boxes but not before some are opened. The contents are evaluated, the gear is tried on, and the equipment is played with. If we didn’t have so much work to do, it would be very entertaining. The reality of the quantity of supplies and equipment has hit everyone.

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY  Friday, March 19, 2011

What a great day; a day au natural as we, again had a blackout that lasted 20 hours. It is hot and humid. We herded many of the hospital staff to start to sort out the boxes. They totally did not know where to store 50 boxes of IV catheters and 400 water pitches.No one had seen ever such clean and well-made surgical scrubs. Woman are now going to birth with their feet in stirrups. Everyone’s eyes were looking around in amazement. Our work for the day had to stop for the community to attend the funeral of a young mother. Hopefully our work in Malawi will decrease the number of funerals.

My birthday party was a blast. Jerrold and I love traveling with Jean and Pat. We work and party well together. We invited all our favorite people from the hospital – John, the accountant, Evance, a medical asistant, Eric, the ambulance driver, and his wife, Matron Peter, his wife, and lovely 5-year-old neice Promise, and the new administrator, Vincent, an educated, low keyed gentlemen, who I think will do good work for the hospital. The had never had peanut and jelly sandwiches nor cheese and crackers that we offered them. I created the Malindi Fizz – Malawi Gin, Orange Fanta, Juice and lime. Not too bad considering nothing was cold and there was no ice.

THE CONTAINER ARRIVED THE DAY AFTER WE DID  Friday, March 18, 2011

It is absolutely amazing. We could not have planned it better if we had orchestrated the timing. We arrived in Malindi on Thursday. On 10 AM on Friday, the container pulls up to the dirt road of the hospital. In the process of driving onto the grounds, we had to remove fences, cut tree branches and hold up electrical wires. And there it was. The 40 foot container. I unsealed the steel tags three months after I sealed them in the Phoenix warehouse of Project C.U.R.E. The 950 boxes of supplies felt like a lot then. No one could believe the amount that had to be unloaded. Everyone including women and children spent almost 5 hours working . The entire covered waiting area for patients was filled. Luckily, it did not rain until we were done. Tomorrow, we will begin to sort through the boxes.

It is fabulous to be back here. Jean, Pat, Jerrold and I are having a fabulous time working and playing together.

BOARDING THE PLANE FOR JOHANNESBURG  Monday, March 14, 2011

I won’t believe it until I see it. The fact that Jerrold and I and the container may arrive in Malindi concurrently in 3 days is amazing. It has been hit and miss.

As of last week, the container was still somewhere in the Indian Ocean heading toward the coast of Mozambique. We had decided not to go if the supplies were not going to be there. Then the ETA of 3/11 turned into the fact that it had arrived and cleared customs on 3/7.

Today, when we tried to check in at the Delta counter, Jerrold was told that his passport was not approved in Joberg. When they finally agreed to give him a boarding pass to Atlanta only, we had to be escorted through security because it was so late. Then, my carry-on luggage was flagged requiring a body search and the discovery of traces of TNT in my handbag (?!). We are in Atlanta, I did not blow up the plane, and Jerrold’s boarding pass appeared.

We will soon be in the air.

THE PROJECT C.U.R.E. CONTAINER IS APPROACHING MALAWI  Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Medical supplies  valued at half a million dollars are approaching St. Martin’s Hospital. This is a dream come true. A year ago, I had no idea how I would contribute to the welfare of the unfortunate and deserving members of this community.

The container left Phoenix on December 16th and travelled from LA to Hong Kong. It is due to arrive in Durban, South Africa on Saturday, travel up to the port of Beira, Mozambique, and proceed across Mozambique via truck or rail to landlocked Malawi.

Jerrold and I leave on March 14th and will arrive two days later. I am getting texts, calls and emails from our many new friends who await our arrival.

The hospital, though, will not be the same without the beloved former administrator, Bernard Ngosi. He died of complications of diabetes at the age 62 in the end of December. He postponed his retirement to await the arrival of the container. I dedicate the container to Mr. Ngosi. Without his support and partnership, it never would have happened. He is missed by all.