In Focus Today
(2007-10-18)
BALTIMORE, MD
(wypr) -
BODY:AMBIENCE 1 [OPEN WITH BBC NEWS CLIP TRACK ]
Part of John Sampson's daily routine is checking news about any regional conflicts on the African continent.
TAPE: (24 SECONDS) TRACK 140 (55 -1:19 seconds)
IC: You have to constantly be prepared to think on your feet, you have to constantly be in tune with what's happening at the location to a higher level than an average person here may have to be. So I have to be online looking at BBC News, talking to people who are there by way of email, or the Internet, or phone, cell phones, and things of that sort.
After all, Sampson is responsible for the safety of doctors and nurses, who volunteer through Doctors for United Medical Missions, or DrUMM -- an organization that provides free health care and medical education in Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Eritrea. Sampson helps manage DrUMM outside his role as an anesthesiologist and critical care medicine specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. But he's recruited several of his Hopkins anesthesiology residents, including Danesh Mazloomdoost, to volunteer with DrUMM.
TAPE: (20 SECONDS) TRACK 156 (5 - 25 seconds)
IC: I have some biases about missions because I'm concerned that it demoralizes the population you're serving by giving this impression that they're not capable of something and so somebody else has to come from the outside. So before I actually solidify those biases, I wanted to actually experience it.
Mazloomdoost is going on DrUMM's mission to Eritrea this month. It will be his first trip to Africa, and the first time he will provide free medical care.
John Hopkins Medical School alumna Aima Ahonkai-Nottidge went on a previous DrUMM mission to Ghana. She has also provided free medical care in Uganda and South Africa through other organizations.
TAPE: (19 SECONDS) TRACK 171 (53 - 1:12)
IC: I think it definitely is much more impactful to have a system in place where you are leaving behind either individuals in the community who now have a new skill or service that they can provide, or capacity that was not in the community before you got there.
DrUMM's goal is to help communities in Africa become more medically self-sufficient. As a result, the organization collaborates with local African health-care providers to develop long-term solutions and help advance medical care.
Once in Eritrea, John Sampson and DrUMM volunteers will unpack boxes of donated medicine and supplies shipped over from the United States. He says volunteers from DrUMM and the Norfolk-based Physicians for Peace will be divided between two hospitals in the capital of Asmara.
TAPE: (33 SECONDS) TRACK 136 (13- 30; 41 - 57)
IC: One of these hospitals is the equivalent of like a trauma center/general hospital. It's an older hospital. It has just the bare bones, basic equipment but they work probably the hardest of any hospital in the entire country . 41 The other hospital that half the team will be out will be quite different. It's going to be practically a brand new hospital that mainland China helped Eritrea helped to build as a humanitarian project and friendship project between those two countries.
At the older hospital, Sampson says DrUMM volunteers will provide medical care including general, urological, oral, and orthopedic surgery. At the new Chinese-built hospital, he says the team will mainly teach nurse anesthetists how to use the new equipment and do advanced procedures.
TAPE: (32 SECONDS) TRACK 164 (44 - 46) and TRACK 165(0 -30)
IC: Eritrea has been able to develop a very effective Nurse anesthesia school that is extremely effective and efficient on extremely limited resources with extremely limited support. I've been working with them for several years .by getting anesthesia doctors and nurses here to go there like two weeks at a time individually and do teaching teach on a rotating basis. But it doesn't solve this global thing of what's happening in rest of Africa.
Sampson says the lack of anesthesiology professionals in Africa is alarming. In many African countries, there's less than one anesthesiologist per million people.
After returning from Eritrea, DrUMM will launch its first mission in rural Jamaica this January with the help of Jamaican-born physicians and nurses working in the United States.
I'm Stephanie Marudas, reporting in Baltimore, for 88.1, WYPR.
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