Doctors and patient
perform to benefit
medical mission
The Aloha Medical Mission will observe its 20th anniversary with a fund-raising concert by "Four Doctors and a Patient" at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Neal Blaisdell Concert Hall.
The performers are Honolulu ophthalmologist Jorge Camara; Timothy Lee, ophthalmologist at Wilcox Hospital on Kauai; Reuben Guerrero, cardiovascular surgeon at Straub Clinic and Hospital; and Bradley Wong, general surgeon at the Queen's Medical Center. All are classically trained pianists.
The patient is Chris Cerna, who has been blind since he was 18 months old. He and his twin brother were born with cancer in the eyes. His eyes were removed and his brother, a pianist, had treatment for cancer. He died several years later.
Chris hadn't been interested in the piano, but after his brother's death, he began playing pieces his brother played. He's now a professional musician in Hawaii with a band.
The Aloha Medical Mission changed his life, bringing him to Hawaii from Cebu in the Philippines for an operation to fill his empty sockets with artificial eyes.
The medical volunteers were treating patients on Cebu in 1989 when rebel soldiers captured the island in a coup against then-Philippine President Corazon Aquino.
The group was trapped and local people brought Cerna out to entertain them in the midst of tanks and Sikorsky helicopters.
The doctors promised to help him after seeing his "withered, atrophic sockets" and kept their promise in 1991.
He plays the mandolin and other instruments as well as piano. His band will join him to play bluegrass music after classical pieces at the concert.
The Aloha Medical Mission, initiated in Honolulu in 1984, has sent 61 missions to the Big Island and to poor, remote communities in the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vanuatu, Laos and Cambodia.
Doctors, nurses and other specialists and lay volunteers from Hawaii and the mainland pay their own way for the missions. The mission provides the equipment and supplies, which it purchases or are contributed.
More than 200,000 people have been treated by the missions and 7,000 have received surgery at no charge. The Aloha Medical Mission also operates the only free medical and dental clinic in Honolulu.
Tickets are $30, $60 and $100. Call Ticketmaster at 526-4400 or the Blaisdell Box Office at 591-2211. All proceeds will go to support future medical missions.
