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Aloha Medical Mission
Philippines trip homecoming for many
volunteers travel to Asia
on a journey of healing
Fighting primitive conditions in Laos
How to help By Helen Altonn
Star-BulletinTwo Aloha Medical Mission teams recently performed surgery and treated thousands of people in poor, isolated areas of the Philippines and Laos. The mission to the Philippines set records for the number of volunteers and patients.
Still, the volunteers always return home wishing they could have done more, said Dr. Jorge Camara, Aloha Medical Mission vice president and spokesman.
"The desire to go back is just overwhelming ... It's heartbreaking to work so hard and yet leave behind so many people who could use your help."
The Aloha Medical Mission since 1982 has sent volunteers on 49 missions to the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Vanuatu, Bangladesh, Laos and Cambodia.They have treated more than 200,000 patients and performed nearly 10,000 surgical operations.
The Aloha Medical Mission, headed by Dr. Ramon Sy, has had more than 700 volunteers since it began, with people from the mainland and other areas often joining those from Hawaii.
Volunteers include ophthalmologists, plastic surgeons, general surgeons, anesthesiologists, internists, obstetricians and other specialists, nurses, pharmacists and lay people.
They pay their own transportation and lodging expenses and take with them medical equipment, supplies and medicine, either donated or purchased with donations.
Trip to Philippines
By Helen Altonn
a homecoming for many
Star-BulletinThe latest Aloha Medical Mission to the Philippines set records for the largest number of volunteers and patients seen.
More than 15,000 patients were seen in four days, said Dr. Jorge Camara, mission vice president and spokesman.
For most of the 89 doctors, nurses and other volunteers on the mission, it was a homecoming.
Camara and Dr. Danilo Ablan, headed the Feb. 18-28 mission to Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur provinces, where many Hawaii Filipinos are from. Ablan is from Ilocos Norte.
The group chartered a plane from Manila to the Ilocos provinces but rode the bus 12 hours back to Manila, Camara said. "The trip itself is very exhausting."
But it was a unique and memorable mission, the doctors said, because physicians and nurses from Hawaii were assigned to their own hometowns.
Only three of the 43 physicians were not Filipino, and many of the Filipino doctors were from the Ilocos area, Camara said. "That is why our turnout for this mission was so moving."Many were first-time volunteers who went to help members of their families and friends.
Ablan, lung and intensive care specialist who coordinated the outreach missions, said, "It turned out to be like a homecoming, a family reunion, a goodwill mission if you may, because some of the volunteers brought not only medicine but candies, toys and nonmedical things."
Camara said community support here for the mission was tremendous because of the home ties. "People were donating money, medicines, supplies and came along on the mission themselves. It was just something to behold."
Doctors, health department officials and other volunteers in the Philippines joined the mission for a group totaling more than 100, Ablan said. Medical services were taken to at least 15 towns and barrios.
He said they had to cross three rivers, with no bridges, to reach one barrio in the mountains. "We used four-wheel drives. The roads are not paved. Sometimes there are no roads."
In one of the hardest barrios to reach, Ablan said, they served almost 1,500 patients in one day and did about 70 surgical procedures.
Camara said next to his own province of Zambales, he considers Ilocos to be his province. An ophthalmologist, he said many of his patients are from there and "told their family to go see the eye surgeon."
Five of 12 Filipino ophthalmologists who have trained here with Camara were on the mission. He said 91 cataract surgeries were done in four days.
Camara said the medical problems on all missions are similar, involving cataracts, glaucoma, disfigurements due to malnutrition such as harelips, cleft palates, neglected thyroid and abdominal tumors and burn injuries.
Said Ablan: "We were able to do a lot but there is a sense of, 'I wish I could do more.' There's so much more that you could do."
Doctors in Laos
By Helen Altonn
fight primitive
conditions
Star-BulletinDoctors continued operating for seven hours after they were supposed to end a recent Aloha Medical Mission to Laos.
The volunteers had treated more than 900 patients and performed 90 surgical procedures.
When the anesthetic machines were finally packed, three children with enlarged spleens and their parents were still waiting outside the operating room door, said Dr. Carl Lum.
One of 53 volunteers on the mission, he said he "had the heart-rending task" of informing them that their surgeries had to be canceled.
"They pleaded and cried and even our nurses had tears. Hopefully, we can do their surgery when we return next year."
Celia Moore, nurse anesthetist at Kaiser Permanente, led the 10-day mission, which left Honolulu on Feb. 21.Lum said Laos is the poorest and least developed of Southeast Asian countries, with some unique medical problems, such as enlarged spleens in children.
"The spleen in a child is the size of a small lemon, but those we saw were the size of a football," he said.
The team flew to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, with 54 boxes of medical supplies, each weighing 70 pounds, plus two portable anesthetic machines, Lum said.
He said customs held up the supplies for 24 hours, but the group continued to Luang Prabang on the Mekong River. When the supplies finally arrived, four boxes had been stolen, he said.
Part of the group went on the third day to Nam Bak, a mountainous village without electricity or running water.
"We were trying to bring medical care a little closer to hill tribes," Moore said.
She said Nam Bak asked the mission last year to take pediatricians and obstetricians there. There are no resources there for surgery, so three patients were sent to Luang Prabang, "which is primitive enough," she said.
Hundreds of patients were waiting for the medical team at the small hospital in Luang Prabang.
Some were those the team didn't have time to treat last year, Moore said.
Lum said the patients were screened for thyroid goiters, gigantic tumors, cleft lips and palates in children, burn and congenital deformities and fractures.He said people in Laos have huge goiters -- larger than in the Philippines -- because seaweed and shrimp from the freshwater Mekong River contain no iodine.
Moore said one of the big problems in a country where the volunteers don't speak the language is patient identification.
This year, she said the patients had name tags and two nurses worked out a chart system so the team could improve follow-up on operations.
A woman with afive-pound tumor growing from the side of her neck was one of their last cases, Lum said. She had carried the tumor with her head tilted to one side for 15 years.
"She was so happy when she saw her normal-looking neck after surgery."
The Aloha Medical Mission plans to go to Bangladesh in June and to the Philippines in November, but is running out of money to obtain medical supplies. "The problem is we're so busy we don't have time to go get grants," says Dr. Jorge Camara, the mission's vice president. How to help
One mission easily can cost about $100,000 because of expenses for supplies, gloves, gowns and lab tests, he says.
Tax-deductible donations may be sent to the Aloha Medical Mission, 1314 S. King St., Honolulu 96814.
