The two organisations I have worked with this year are Cure Hospital in Malawi and Mercy Ships in Liberia. Both have a similar objective to follow the example of the figure of Jesus, trying to be his hands in a needy world. The mandate of the Mercy Ship’s is to ‘bring hope and healing to the forgotten poor’. The practicalities of bringing these two things are overwhelming. One of the reasons is that many people don’t fall into the Extreme Pathologies that these organisations target. When people do, however, they are received regardless of their ethnic background, religious affiliation or ability to pay.
Typical town life in Bong Town, Liberia
The Ponsetti Technique of casting being used in Malawi to treat club feet.However, you only have to look beyond the ship and you see a war torn country, people dying of malnutrition, infection and diarrhoea. There has been no electricity or running water for 14 years. We really are scratching the surface in terms of who we can help. The important thing to remember is that for those individuals we do treat, it makes a 100% difference. Their felt need is being met. It offers the enormous opportunity to no longer be an outcast in your own culture and to gain health and healing. This is my simple view and the basic level at which I cope.
4 comments:
It must be hard to have to make the decisions on who gets help! Even so to help one at a time must be very rewarding and knowing the results, instead of only treating the physical and not the emotional or spiritual. It is a great gift that you and the medical staff are giving.
As Geo has stated before, we are very proud of you, Nigel....proud of both of you! We love you and keep praying for you guys.
Love from me,
Ann/Mom
Nigel,
Is the boy shown below with a face tumor an actual case from Liberia? The tumor seems to have displaced his teeth, yet the removed tumor picture shows a pretty normal jaw and teeth alignment. This must have been more complicated than just removing the tumor. I almost wondered if it is the same boy, or was a sample photo used to demonstrate the condition prior to surgery?
curious george
Hi George
Thanks for the interest and curiosity! He is the same boy. He was from an ealier outreach but we have done similar cases, it just takes a while to wait for the pictures to be processed by the ship. This is quite a big surgery as the tumour involves the bone of the cheek. Gary, the surgeon, makes an incision from the lip, round the side of the nose and under the eye. In order to remove the tumour, he removes nearly all the bone of the cheek, the bottom of the eye socket and the teeth then come away with the whole thing too - so he loses some teeth in the process. He makes a new eye socket by grafting bone from the remains of the cheek bone left behind and he then brings a flap of muscle down from the scalp to fill the defect where the tumour was. The swelling is huge after these operations and they are fed by a tube through their nose and into their stomach for a week. Sometimes they need further surgery to help 'bulk' out the cheek if needs it. He looks a little different as the distortion has gone and his head is shaved I think.
N
That's just incredible! Like you say, something like this corrective surgery will change this boy's life. Now it's up to him to make good on the gift given to him.
George
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