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Show poor copy 15 1 he Still Lake ihuru' 1 Sunday, January H, 1 481 Doctors Make Calls by Plane In Primitive African Areas i By Burry Shluehter Ahhui'iutfd Brush Writer NAIROBI, Kunyu - In purls of tins liruud continent, doctors make c?lls by airplunu. Day in, day out, operations are routinely performed in some of the world s most primis tive surroundings by the flying of the African Medical and Foundation. Airborne surgeons land in bush clearings or at small mission hospitals, often to save lives that would otherwise be lost due to the lack of locally available specialist care. For 21 Robert Kipke-mo- i, strapped to a table, it was an inexplicable and terrifying experience. The mission hospital at Sotik, 188 miles west of Nairobi, had no anesthesiologist. So the tea farmer's sdn could not be put under while in hns mothers comforting arms, as surgeon John Totten would have pfeferred. Surgeons First Visit "Dr. Totten, of Glasgow, Scotlahd, had landed that overcast morning at a small tea plantation airstrip found by an AMREF pilot, Joe Moran, although it was unmarked on maps. It was the surgeon's first visit to Sotik and the hospital's staff doctors . asked him to perform three operations that they themselves couldn't handle. Robert Kipkemoi required a biopsy to determine whether a tumor which made his abdomen the size of a soccer ball was cancerous. "Someone like John Totten could tqke the biopsy to a Nairobi laboratory today," says Dr. Lawrence McEntee, a general practitioner at Sotik's St. Clare Mission Hospital. "We, on the other hand, would have had to mail it and hear the results in about 10 to 12 weeks. The boy could be dead by then. In Kenya and Tanzania, where most of the flights are made, AM- - REF supplements rural hospitals that on average provide one doctor for every 70,000 people. Began in 1956 Africa's organized flying doctor . service traces its beginnings to 1956 when three plastic surgeons .American Tom Rees, New Zealander Sir Archibald Mclndoe and Briton -Michael Wood sipped sundowners . in sight of Mount Kilimanjaro. The doctors considered whether the airplane might be more practical and 'economical than surface transport in the continent's rugged terrain to provide specialist medical treat- irjent and evacuate ill or seriously .Injured patients. -"Whiskey was the catalyst, I doc-lor- lie-sear- Associated Press Photo operates vaccination program in the tiny village of Mararani, Kenya. She is known as Mama Daktari. Dr. Anne Spoerry AMREF's director general who wears the sort of sleeveless bush jacket favored by big game hunters. Rees returned home to New York and Mclndoe to London where they each registered the service as a nonprofit organization and raised funds for what was then a operation run by Wood. I think by 1958 we owned half an airplane, Wood recalls. . Built Airstrips In the remotest corners of East Africa, villagers voluntarily built hundreds of airstrips when they came to realize that such clearings created access to doctors. "They made some very good strips which we still use today, and it never cost us a penny, Wood says. Over the years, AMREF attracted a pool of remarkable people, including Dr. Anne Spoerry of France. A like Wood, she was active in the French Resistance during World War II, was imprisoned two years in a Nazi concentration camp because of her Underground work, and arrived in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising of the Today, she is affectionately known as Mama Daktari Swahili for Mama Doctor and makes regular medical air safaris to such places as Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, Lamu off the Indian Ocean coast, and Masailand, the rolling plains of Kenya and Tanzania which are the traditional home of the Masai warriors. Recent Recruit recent recruits is Dr. NanAmong cy L. Caroline, of Boston, an expert on emergency treatment who taught at the University of Pittsburgh medical school, Pittsburgh. Pa., set up an emergency paramedical service there and in Israel, and has written several textbooks on her specialty. AMFrom "half an airplane. REF's fleet has grown to seven. From Wood on his own, it has become the employer of 235, representing 16 nationalities but increasingly Africanized. Its buildings at Nairobi's Wilson Airport, used mostly by light aircraft, house radio equipment, computers and printing presses. In the quarter-centur- y since its founding. AMREF treated nearly 1 million people, immunized 1.2 million and had more than 1,000 medical evacuations. The foundation researches, writes and publishes its own medical and public health textbooks and man guess, . - Reuter . Nevys Agency Nine women trek through the Annapurna Mountain range in the Himalayas in May to study their behavior under stress, the expedition organizer said week. "Society needs more information about the way women react to stress because women are entering new types of work," the organizer. Dr. ' AJine Beuter, a French neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, said. . ."The members of our group vary in age from 28 to 52 and they will begin their trek mainly as strang-efs- , she said. "Our purpose will be to study our cooperation and efficiency as we endure heavy physical -- ejertion. ;The team, including a French doctor. Martine Orlewski. a science cftgineer, a social psychologist, a biologist. a research scientist, a sociologist. a metallurgist and a medical technician, will trek through the range at heights of up to 18.500 feet for eight hours a day. .Each member of the group will fill out a questionnaire each night trek and make reduring the cordings of personal observations. y Training Workers major activity today is training health workers for Kenya and neighboring countries. Last summer, an AMREF team set up shop in Entebbe, Uganda, to rehabilitate the East African state's national health service under a $5 million program funded by CIDA. the Canadian government aid agency. A similar project. underwritten at $9 9 million by the US. Agency for International Development, is being run in southern Sudan. "Our flying doctor service is now just 15 percent of what we do." Wood says. "But it tends to get more of the glamour. While the organization's expenditures have climbed from about $275,000 in 1973 to an estimated $4.9, million in 1983. the flying doctors, are actually flying less. Emergency j evacuations dropped from 244 to 200 in the past decade, and the number of operations from 1.315 to 1.015. Changes Philosophy Although it began by providing airborne specialist support services. AMREF. like many of its donor agencies, has undergone a in its' philosophy and now works on the premise that far more people would benefit by training community health workers, producing textbooks and providing consultants to governments. "This is where emotions and statistics conflict," says Dr. Marcus French. "On a statistical or scientific basis, you say, what a pity, these people are just too expensive to treat.' But as a doctor, I feel I should treat anybody and everybody." The problem, another staffer says, is "taking the old flying doctor service and bringing it philosophically in line with the rest of AMREF, where the emphasis now is on , 32 OZ. KRAFT MIRACLE WHIP $19 basic-chang- e 38 OZ. BUY 2 PACKAGES GF HONEY NUT CHEERIOS FOR $299 & GET 1 PACKAGE OF CHEERIOS prevention, training indigenous health workers and promoting at all levels." Dr. Caroline, who as "Dr. Amref'' writes a medical advice column in a local newspaper, says that creating in health has become the goal since the era of the white man's burden is long over. The question is. she says, "what do you do about people who are so impoverished they cannot help themselves? Do we just forget about them? PFAFF MARKETING TEST Mon., Tues., Wed., Jan. 9, 10, 14 3 Days Only FRYER DRUMSTICKS A pilot-doct- w511 last - in English and Swahili with the help of staff specialists who now include anthropologists and sociologists of AMREF's social behavior unit. n mid-1950- s. 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