Maternal and Child Health

Our volunteers returned safely this weekend from Segou, after a successful surgery mission to help dozens of women in Mali heal from severe complications of childbirth.  Jaya Tiwari, Director of Global Health Programs for Physicians for Peace, who traveled with the mission team, sends out her heart-felt appreciation for all the hard work and dedication of everyone involved:

 

Hello Ladies,

Just wanted to drop a little note to say a big thank you to all of you for your time, energy, skills, and resources in making this mission a success!!! I have traveled with many other PFP teams before and can tell you that without a doubt this was my best experience of a PFP team working so well together on their first mission. Even with all the bureaucratic and language barrier issues, the whole mission ran so smoothly!!

Laura, I couldn't thank you enough for agreeing to not only join the team at a short notice but staying the extra 11 days to help us do the post-op follow up and information gathering. I am humbled by your compassion, commitment, and willingness to invest your time, skills, and resources to help women suffering with VVF!! You know that I will always have a soft spot in my heart for my “PSR Docs” but seeing you jump in and make the kind of personal and financial commitment and sacrifice you did in your first PFP mission left me speechless!!!  Even before this mission, I knew you were a fantastic surgeon but seeing you blend so easily and work so efficiently with the Malian team and your amazing ability to put people at ease, whomever you interacted with and wherever you went, made me realize what a wonderful and special human being you are!!!

I am really excited about you working with Dr. Samaki in Segou on additional cases this week and especially getting the opportunity to work with Professor Oauttara at Hospital Point G for 4 extra days before you leave for U.S. With this and your previous VVF mission experience, you are unquestionably the most experienced VVF surgeon of the U.S. team that PFP has worked with so far, and I truly hope that you will become one of the core members/U.S. team leaders for our future VVF missions. After this surgery mission, I am more and more convinced that regardless for where in Africa we do VVF missions, we must find an in-country team leader like Professor Ouattara for Mali or Dr. Saad for Nigeria to take the overall lead of the mission, at least for the first three or four missions, in every country we go into, so I will need to work with my bosses at PFP to see if we can adopt this as an organizational policy. However, even with a strong African team leader, we need an equally strong, experienced, and skilled (but also humble and culturally and politically sensitive) U.S. team leader and I see you taking on this role in future PFP missions in Mali and other countries in West Africa!! As you heard, Mavis and Dr. Coulibaly were requesting additional PPF VVF missions not only in Segou, but in Markala and Timbuktu, so we are really going to need to expand the team and have you and Ellie start to take on the lead in helping recruit and train more surgeons and OBGYNS to join the U.S. team!! 

Ellie, I know this was your first VVF mission and at times you were unsure and nervous but I want you to know that I have seen veteran U.S. OBGYN (people twice your age and twice the years of service in U.S.) on their third or fourth VVF mission be completely at a loss about what to do (and that is in a English speaking country!!). As I mentioned to you in Segou, most U.S. OBGYN are so intimidated by their lack of exposure to VVF as a condition that they cannot even muster up the courage to join a mission let alone travel to Africa and do half as well as you did in Segou on your first day in the OR. The fact that Professor Ouattara asked you to take the lead on a number of cases on your very first mission should tell you the level of trust and confidence in your skills and ability by one of the most prominent Malian surgeons. Also, the fact that you were so prepared and came so loaded with meds and supplies for your very first PFP mission warmed my heart and left me forever grateful to you!!  Your energy, drive and motivation, attention to details and the willingness to jump into a completely unfamiliar situation and master it all so quickly is exemplary!!! I know you run your own very busy practice and have two young kids of your own so taking 10 days off to be on a PFP mission is a HUGE financial and personal sacrifice, but I hope that the joy of being able to help some of the most vulnerable women in Africa and the opportunity to step out of your comfort zone and expand your surgical, professional and cultural experience in life made up for some of it. The fact that I have repeatedly asked you to plan on joining the next mission in Segou and remain a core team member of the Mali VVF team, and even think about taking the lead of the U.S. team of one of the future VVF missions in Mali or other countries in West Africa should tell you of my trust and confidence in you. As I said earlier, this was our first surgical mission (and of course first VVF mission) to Mali so it was a learning experience for all of us (including our hosts at MV/MCI project and at the hospital) and I assure you that things will continually get easier and more efficient as we work together. I hope that you and Laura will continue to be our lead doctors of VVF team in Mali and help us figure out how to expand our volunteer medical missions to cover even more people and places!!

Pam and Lisa, thanks a million for bringing so much more than your superior medical skills to this team. Your patience, warmth, charm, and sense of humor kept all of us grounded and sane whenever things started to get crazy and stressful. Pam, as we discussed earlier, as we expand the scope of the mission and start to work in other hospitals and cover additional surgical specialty areas in Mali, we will be able to utilize more and more of your fine trauma and triage skills but I am indebted to you for your flexibility and willingness to roll with the punches and adopt to the new and ever changing roles and responsibilities we threw your way everyday to keep the mission running smoothly. I am so glad I called on you to be a part of the Mali VVF mission, you really completed the team. And you lucky bum, I am so envious (happy for you but still envious) of you that you got to spend a few hours in my favorite city in the whole world, Paris, while Frances and I were moping around at the CDG airport!!)

Lisa, in addition to being an excellent medical assistant, you are a sweetheart!! I can see now why Ellie is so fond of you and insisted on bringing you as part of the team. I have to tell you that I am always hesitant to let someone with no previous overseas travel experience join a PFP mission to Africa (because of the obvious physical, professional and emotional challenges we have to face on these trips), and had my reservations about how you were going to handle the trip. You, my friend, exceeded my expectations! The fact that even after Ellie making you walk all over town in 106-108 degree temperature you could still jump in and do a full day of OR assisting left me speechless.  You have such a big heart, and so much empathy for those less fortunate than you, that I wasn’t surprised a bit when you broke down at the sight of the boy with leg injuries. I was humbled by your willingness to take on the responsibility of paying for his care!! You single handedly saved that kid from so much pain and suffering in life, and you know that even without knowing your name and knowing a whole lot about you, that boy and his family will always remember you as someone who reached out and helped in time of their need!! Don’t forget to show your kids (and their young friends) pictures of this boy and his family and remind them just how lucky they are compared to the majority of kids their age in other parts of the world.   

Frances, my traveling companion in Nigeria, travel buddy and roommate in Mali, and surgical tech extraordinaire, you don’t need me to tell you how lucky PFP is to have you as a volunteer. You were the glue that held the PFP’s Nigeria VVF team together, and you are now the core part of the Mali VVF team. Your ability to anticipate what’s needed in the OR room and step up the supply room and make things run smoothly under the most stressful situations, and relate to our host hospital staff so beautifully despite the language barrier is an amazing gift and something PFP will continue to depend on for future VVF surgery missions in many years to come. My hats off to you our “Africa Princess” (we do have to switch you to a different anti-malarial pill for the future missions though!)

With every obstacle that came our way in planning and implementation of this very first surgical/VVF mission to Mali, I couldn’t have asked for a better team!!  I will always treasure the time spent in Mali with my “sisterhood of traveling medical mission team”. It was my personal honor and privilege to accompany this team, and PFP is indebted to each one of you for your contribution. We look forward to working with you for many years to come!

With lots of love and hugs to you all,

Jaya

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