Global Health Progress

Dr. Glenn Geelhoed, professor of surgery, international medical education, and microbiology and tropical medicine at the George Washington University, recently returned from his first medical mission of 2009. After bidding farewell in Nairobi to the group who leave westward from Africa, he turns eastward to rendezvous with a fresh crew in the Philippines.

The team at work in the comparatively deluxe Far North Luzon General Hospital and Training Center.
Posts in this series:

1. Mission to Duk Payuel
2. At the Duk Lost Boys Clinic
3. New Year’s Day
4. Winding down in Duk Payuel
5. Old Fangak
6. Arriving in Werkok
7. Arrival at Far North Luzon
8. An unexpected blackout

January 18 — We have arrived at Apayao Province in an “LGU” = “Local Government Unit” named Luna, our destination for the next week and have made our entrance into this town of 22 barangay (villages) with a total population of 20,000 people. It’s our inaugural mission in this end of the Philippines, and we are as far north as it is possible to go.  The people here are grateful for our visit, and we have driven in convoy under banners hung from the telephone poles announcing the arrival of our mission.

At our reception, the former mayor of Luna proudly claims Apayo’s title of the “Fourth poorest province in the Philippines, isolated by the mountains from all the rest of what is happening in the bigger provinces and cities.” The mayor and his staff have put on a reception for us, which included a series of speeches congratulating us for doing what we have not yet done, and inviting our return for more of what we don’t know yet. We were allowed only seven kilos of carry-on baggage on the commuter plane from Manila into Tugueragao, and we had to check in the rest, which included a large quantity of OR supplies as well as all the stuff I had brought both from my continuing travel from Africa and the bags I had pre-positioned to arrive from San Francisco. The people of the Philippines are very grateful and have tried to help us, despite the regulations. Our more than 300 kilos of surgical baggage should have cost several thousand dollars in surcharges, but these were waived as we explained the nature of our mission.

The patients were lined up to see us as we set up a screening area where I reviewed over a dozen goiter patients.  About half of the patients could speak Tagaolog, and the other half could only speak Iliacano, the language of northern Luzon. Bridging the language gap was Dr. Alfredo Casino, an  Ilicano-born doctor who lived for years in the U.S. He returned to Philipines to fix the lips and palates of the poor (as he once was) in his native island, and would regale us later with his story about being a youth following a “carabao”— water buffalo.

On arrival at the OR a new baby girl was squalling, and a C-section had just been done. The hospital itself is thought to be primitive according to our host’s apologies, but recall where I just have arrived from. I see the electricity “on demand” and many of the things we might need, including a space already designated for operating which we do not have to invent — and a local staff of nursing and administrative folk who will help us get it all together. We are a long ways “up market” from where I was only a week ago.

I imagined the young folk returning from my prior African missions as they are making their way back home full of stories that no one will believe, and they will have to pull out their photo discs and start showing pictures to convince anyone of the reality of what they have just seen and done. We are about to start up our own history here, and begin this week with the historic “inaugural mission” to the “Far North Luzon General Hospital and Training Center.”