My friend, an anaesthetist has just come back from saving babies in Sri Lanka. He goes every year and together with an expert team, consisting of a paediatric cardiac surgeon, a cardiologist, intensive care physician and paediatric care nurses all from Guy’s Hospital they travelled to Sri Lanka to perform operations on children with fully investigated and diagnosed congenital cardiac conditions. Once operated on, the children are then nursed in the intensive care units until they are fit and stable enough to be discharged in to the ward. The team go for 10 days and this time they operated on 18 babies with heart disease. It was their 7th “Mercy Mission” and during that time they operated on their 100th child.
The missions are solely funded by donations and sponsorships and all the staff who fly in devote their time and expertise completely free of charge. Their objective is to continue to raise funds and sponsorship in order to establish a long standing relationship and to share their specialist knowledge with local staff.
What a brilliant idea and a truly amazing achievement to date.
More professionals should work together to do the same thing in different parts of the world.
Look at the tiny baby in the photograph:-
and here are some of the team members:-
October 19th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
That is so heartwarming to hear about.
It stops me in my tracks to see that tiny baby in that situation. And reminds me how lucky I am.
October 19th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I know. Isn't it an amazing story and it certainly puts things into perspective Lx
October 20th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Oh wow, that's an incredible story. And makes me sit up and take notice and start thinking of what contributions I could make, instead of fannying about… Thank you xx