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Johney Ali, 8, and Mima Khatun, 16, had never been out of their Bangladesh village until they were brought to Hawaii for medical treatment. Aloha Medical Mission,
Shriners give aid, hope
to Bangladeshi childrenBy Helen Altonn
Star-BulletinBorn with clubfeet, Johney walked on his ankles, which were developing big calluses, said Susan Scott, who brought the children here with her husband, Dr. Craig Thomas.
Mima suffered partial paralysis of both legs because of congenital abnormalities and "was pretty much sitting in a corner in her house all her life," Scott said. "She was well cared for but she couldn't walk."
The children had never seen a doctor until their mothers took them to a clinic in their village of Dinajpur when Scott and Thomas were there last year on an Aloha Medical Mission.
The two mission volunteers worked the past year on arrangements to have the children treated here at Shriners Hospital.
"Just getting them to the capital of Dhaka was an amazing experience for them," said Scott, a registered nurse.
Mima had never seen a wheelchair until arriving at the airport, she said.
Scott said Shriners orthopedist Ellen Raney planned to perform surgery today on Johney and doctors are studying Mima's condition, which may not require surgery.
She said the girl walked for the first time in her life at Shriners using a walker.
"She had everybody crying when she walked down the hall the first time," she said.
Neither child speaks English and they're extremely homesick, Scott said. The manager of the Dinajpur clinic, a dental surgeon, came here with them and is translating. But it would help to have other visitors who speak Bengali, she said.
"Johney understands what's going on. He said, 'I'm trying not to cry; I'm trying to be brave, but I wish my mom was here.' "
She said the mothers "took extraordinary care" of the two children, but life was difficult for them because of their disabilities.
"We're hoping to teach them some English, to get them walking and they'll go back being the prince and princess of the town."
Scott and Thomas established a clinic four years ago in Dhaka with an extended family of Bangladeshi Americans living here and there. The family members decided when their parents died to donate the family home for a clinic, Scott said.
Last year, they opened a second clinic in Dinajpur, a rural town in northern Bangladesh, and another clinic was opened this year in the countryside.
"We're excited about it," said Thomas, president of Hawaii Emergency Physicians Associated and emergency room physician at Castle Medical Center and Wahiawa General Hospital.
"It's a chance to intervene in kids' lives, when they can learn how to walk still, and get hopefully a pretty normal life out of this."
The Aloha Medical Mission provides partial support for the clinic, which operates on about $8,000 a year, Scott said. It has a doctor about four hours a day and a nutritionist.
Aloha Medical Mission's volunteer doctors and nurses do "wonderful things" in acute services, Thomas said. "For the people you can treat, it's fabulous."
But some require more extensive treatment, he said. The clinics are keeping track of those people and when he and his wife go there annually, they take an appropriate specialist or identify kids who can be helped here, he said.
He said Shriners has "a spectacular program" in which it takes kids from Pacific countries with orthopedic problems. So last year he and Scott took pictures and X-rays of Johney and Mima and brought them back to see if Shriners could help.
The family involved with the clinics formed Aloha Social Services Bangladesh, with some Aloha Medical Mission support, and expanded its program.
Besides the clinics, the organization operates a school like a Headstart program and has a microcredit program that makes loans to help villagers develop little businesses.
Mima's mother, for instance, has a little sewing business, doing quilting with other women, Thomas said.
People pay interest and if the loans generate any income, it goes into the clinics.
Tom Brotherton, Shriners administrator, said the hospital is willing to help with Bangladeshi children Thomas identifies as needing extensive care.
All hospital care is free and the Shriners' Aloha Temple helps with transportation costs if funding isn't available, Brotherton said.