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- Community, Patient StoriesGeneral Page Tier 3BlogThe year was 1997 when Edward Zebovitz, DDS, first learned about the crucial need for medical and dental care in developing regions of the world such as the Philippines, Caribbean, East Africa, and Bangladesh. “A colleague of my father’s was doing mission trips, and I knew I had to get involved,” says the oral and maxillofacial surgeon with a practice based in Bowie. The non-profit organization Surgeons for Smiles was born. Seventeen years later, Dr. Zebovitz and his team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and support staff have completed their 34th mission trip. This time they went to Sorsogon, a province on the island of Luzon in the Philippines where genetic facial deformities like cleft lip and cleft palate are common. The team performed 50 cleft lip and palate surgeries on children in just five days. “The conditions are horrible,” Dr. Zebovitz says of the places he travels. “People’s basic needs, like shelter and food, aren’t always met. It is very sad to see.” They rely on donations to fund the missions. Whatever is not donated, Dr. Zebovitz personally finances. This spring, Dr. Zebovitz, who is married to OB-GYN Coryse Brathwaite, MD, and has four children ages 18, 20, 21, and 22, will go on another trip. This time, they will go to East Africa. “I hope to one day retire to Surgeons for Smiles,” says Dr. Zebovitz, with a smile.
- Community, Pediatrics, Patient StoriesGeneral Page Tier 3BlogWhen local pediatrician, Dr. Steve Brown, was young, he dreamed of being a doctor working on a boat. The first part of his dream defined his career as a pediatrician, and last year, he realized the second part while he served as a volunteer at The Lake Clinic, Cambodia. The clinic brings doctors, medical supplies and other services to seven floating villages on the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. Many of the houses in these villages are either floating structures or built on stilts over the water, and the area is so remote that the only way to bring a clinic to the people is by boat. Dr. Brown had been consulting with clinics (including one in Cuba) over the internet for a year or so, helping them to assess more difficult illnesses or conditions. “I’ll get pictures of dermatological conditions, or something that transmits in a photograph,” he says, “and it’s easy for me to get a specialist to take a look at it.” After helping patients online, Dr. Brown had an opportunity to spend a month at the clinic where he experienced first-hand the extreme needs of people in such a remote location. “We traveled three to four hours to reach people who couldn’t even seek medical care if they wanted to,” he says. “Families are living off of $2 per day and it cost $40 to $50 worth of fuel just to get us there.” He says the most rewarding aspect of the work is the appreciation shown by the people they were helping. “The people are just so grateful that you’re there helping them and it gives you a warm feeling inside to be able to do that.” Dr. Brown also volunteers for Project Angkor, a humanitarian mission that sets up free temporary clinics in remote areas to treat patients and help train Cambodian medical students. Cambodia has a special draw for Dr. Brown, but volunteerism has characterized his career both near and far. As a member of the Maryland Physician Emergency Volunteer Corps, he worked with the Red Cross after hurricane Katrina to see people in Maryland who had been displaced from homes and needed medical care. “This kind of work is definitely what I went into medicine for,” he says. “I wanted to be able to help people who need the help.”
- Community, Patient StoriesGeneral Page Tier 3BlogEducating surgeons has been a life-long endeavor for AAMC’s Chair of the Department of Surgery Adrian Park, MD. So when he discovered an organization that focuses on teaching surgeons in Africa, he knew he’d found his calling. Having spent his middle school and high school years in Africa, Dr. Park has a fondness for the continent and a deep appreciation for the challenges of establishing quality surgical care in some of the world’s poorest and most remote locations. As a member of the Pan African Association of Christian Surgeons (PAACS), Dr. Park has spent more than 15 years helping to develop high-quality, rigorous surgical residency programs to train African surgeons in more than a half dozen countries. “Our surgical residency training programs are five year programs, with all of the validations and certifications that train African surgeons with standards that we’d expect back here,” Dr. Park says. Often, when young African men and women come to the West to train, they either stay or they return to the capital city in their home country which serves only a select population. This leaves the more remote areas of Africa without adequate surgical care. The residency programs Dr. Park is helping to build are training Africans in Africa where they will be able to serve their countrymen who need them most. As the current president of PAACS, Dr. Park says the most inspiring moments have been those spent with the African doctors he trains. “Some of them have had to literally take their families across countries, through jungles and civil wars at risk of life and limb to get this training. By the time they come to us, they’ve been through so much. English may be their fourth or fifth language. Imagine learning medicine in your fourth or fifth language,” remarks Dr. Park. Dr. Park says they’ve established 11 programs in countries such as Gabon, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Niger. They plan to graduate more than 20 surgeons a year by 2025 or 2030. That’s a large number since some sub-Saharan countries currently have fewer than 20 general surgeons in total. Dr. Park says that his experience with PAACS has been the ultimate expression of the “teaching a man to fish” parable. “Developing these training programs has a sustainable effect on the access to and the delivery of quality surgical care in the most remote and underserved parts of Africa,”Dr. Park says.
- Community, Patient StoriesGeneral Page Tier 3BlogJessie Paltell, RN, Becca Burnett, BSN, RN, and Steve Roy, patient care technician, recently returned from Uganda, where they volunteered their time as medical professionals with a church group. The village where we pitched our tents for the work week was in the Kole District of Northern Uganda. During our time there, we provided medical services and distributed eye glasses, mosquito nets, soccer balls, and other necessities such as Bibles, clothing, hand-knitted hats, sunglasses, toothbrushes, tennis shoes, bicycles and a huge water filtration system to be used by the families in the surrounding villages. Our medical clinic was nothing fancy—far from any medical facilities or clinics we have around here. We used two rooms in the old school building to set up our triage, clinic, and pharmacy areas. Our triage and clinic “stations” were school desks positioned throughout the rooms. Our pharmacy was set up out of cardboard boxes and plastic trunks, with plastic bags for distribution of medications. Every day, families lined up, hundreds at a time, to wait in line to be seen. By some miracle, we were able to treat 3,039 people over four days. We were able to bandage wounds, drain infected cysts, diagnose skin rashes, provide medications for malaria, worms, pain, viruses, and STDs, treat burn victims, and so much more. Every night we played soccer with the kids in the surrounding villages using soccer balls we brought with us to hand out to them. The toys they were accustomed to included empty water bottles for sword fighting and rocks for soccer and kickball-type games. Seeing their faces light up when we handed them soccer balls was a once-in-a-lifetime experience – that was true joy! We were able to make a difference while we were in Uganda. We healed those who were sick, bandaged wounds, provided necessary medications. But furthermore, we were able to experience the amazing places and build relationships with the beautiful people of Uganda, Africa.
- Orthopedics, Senior Care, Patient StoriesGeneral Page Tier 3BlogFor more than thirty years, Dick Carey has spent his free time underwater. The 76-year-old from Severna Park conducted oyster surveys in the Chesapeake Bay for decades and has been a volunteer scuba diver for the National Aquarium since 1982. Now he owns a farm in West Virginia and hopes to raise a few cattle. A man like Dick doesn’t have time for the knee problems that had been starting to slow him down. After years of managing his pain Dick decided on a total knee replacement with Paul King, MD, and he’s once again unstoppable. My knee had been going for a long time. I had some arthroscopic surgery in 2004 and then I was getting cortisone shots. It just got to where I couldn’t continue doing that because it just didn’t fit my lifestyle. I scuba dive, I have a farm, and with a bad knee that you can only stand on for less than two hours in a day just wasn’t hacking it. Before the surgery, I was favoring my right leg. When the weather was warmer, I was repairing the fence in some areas and I didn’t finish because within two hours of going out to work on it, I was back sitting down the rest of the day because now my back started to hurt. I was seeing a pain doctor and he wanted to give me a block in my back because he said I had a pinched nerve. I didn’t want anyone messing with my back, so, I talked with my personal doctor. He urged me to wait until after the knee surgery. Nearly seven weeks after the operation I went up to the aquarium and did a special event. You don’t know how good that was. I didn’t want to give up the aquarium. Soon after, I left for the farm out in West Virginia to continue working on the fence. I’m glad I waited because I haven’t had any problems since the knee replacement. You have no idea how much better it is. So with the farm, the diving and my lifestyle, it’s pretty important to have a knee that works.