Highlights mission trip March 2019
This outreach was a bit different compared to our previous visits in two ways. Gerrit and his colleague Yerco who is a camera man, joined this trip to make pictures and movies of our medical outreach and the memory lane trip of Jantine.
Filming and pictures:
This time our PR board member Gerrit Staal (brother in law) and his colleague Yerco Clavero, who is a professional cameraman, joined us. We got permission from the hospital board to make pictures and movies. And asked consent of all staff and patients before filming interviewing and making personal pictures.
We tend to do the surgical visits with a team consisting of 2 surgeons, a (logistic) nurse, scrub nurse and a doctor, specializing in tropical medicine. And if possible: physician assistant in anaesthesiology or anaesthesiologist.
We’ve noticed through the years that once we get started as a medical team in the hospital we can’t find the time to make good pictures or follow up on patients that where helped in the past. No time to go to villages and visit our ex-patients and see how they are doing. Most pictures we tend to make may be interesting for medical staff but not so appropriate for the general public.
As board of Simba-foundation we decided that it might benefit us in the future to have a small data-base with visual material to help us for feedback towards donors, fundraising, promotion to find more specialists to join these outreaches….
Memory lane:
Jantine(nurse-midwife) and her husband Harry(surgeon) worked for a bout 20 years in Tanzania. Actually they are the ones that got us all infected with Africa. Their example and passion for serving the sick in Tanzania has inspired us to continue this work.
Jantine lost her husband (my father) in 1991 in Tanzania with a plane crash. He was leaving from Sengerema with a small MAF plane for a medical visit to a colleague in another hospital in de south of Tanzania. His departing was a terrible disaster and loss for us all!
The hospital built a memorial for him right in the heart of the Hospital of Sengerema. Jantine stayed on for 10 more years to work in Tanzania.
It was very inspiring, encouraging and a joy to be able to spend time to visit health centres where Jantine worked and see her ex-students still working there. Also visiting young patients and seeing how they are picking up life after surgery.
Erik, our 3 children and I lived and worked in Sengerema for almost 5 years from 1999 tot 2004. “Hope can rise out of ashes” (M. de Servantes)
Ever since then we’ve managed to continue with different specialist teams from Holland to support the sick in Sengerema and region around her until today.
The visit
Erik Staal and Bart Boll as surgeons had a full schedule for the 2 weeks in Sengerema. For Bart and his partner Irma Prudon (physician assistant anaesthesiology) this was their 6th medical trip to Sengerema. It is so good to see how the local staff of the hospital have familiarized with them and feel comfortable working and learning form them.
Mitchell Windsma a tropical doctor trainee of Erik was able to work and learn under supervision how to work in a hospital of a developing country with so much less equipment, less diagnostic possibilities and patients who come to find treatment in a much later stadium.
Iris Ewes theatre-nurse from Slingerland hospital kept busy assisting where needed and supporting the local theatre staff with all these extra surgeries that were scheduled because of our visit. This trip 60 surgical interventions were done. About 108 patients got a consultation and advice from a specialist.
Next medical mission is scheduled in the first two weeks op Oktober 2019.
Written by Jiska Staal-Kamstra