Orbis Blog

Orbis has its own blog--which is a good reference to keep up with the latest "going ons" of the Flying Eye Hospital.

Farewell from Uganda

The Flying Eye Hospital program in Kampala, Uganda has ended and the ORBIS DC-10 is currently en route to its next destination of Harbin, China. ORBIS volunteer faculty and blogger (http://uvealblues.blogspot.com/) Dr Hardeep Dhindsa sent blog.orbis.org a small collection of photos from the Uganda program containing an assortment of images of fellow volunteer faculty and patients. The album can be found here.

Tortured, but Not Silenced

What an inspiring person...

In 10 days, Halima’s extraordinary memoir will be published in the United States, at considerable risk to herself. She writes in “Tears of the Desert” of growing up in a placid village in rural Darfur, of her wonder at seeing white people for the first time, of her brilliant performance in school.

Eventually Halima became a doctor, just as the genocide against black African tribes like her own began in 2003. Halima soon found herself treating heartbreaking cases, like that of a 6-year-old boy who suffered horrendous burns when the state-sponsored janjaweed militia threw him into a burning hut.

One day she gave an interview in which she delicately hinted that the Darfur reality was more complicated than the Sudanese government version. The authorities detained her, threatened her, warned her to keep silent and transferred her to a remote clinic where there were no journalists around to interview her.

Then the janjaweed attacked a girls’ school near Halima’s new clinic and raped dozens of the girls, aged 7 to 13. The first patient Halima tended to was 8 years old. Her face was bashed in and her insides torn apart. The girl was emitting a haunting sound: “a keening, empty wail kept coming from somewhere deep within her throat — over and over again,” she recalls in the book.
(..)
Halima found herself treating the girls with tears streaming down her own face. All she had to offer the girls for their pain was half a pill each of acetaminophen: “At no stage in my years of study had I been taught how to deal with 8-year-old victims of gang rape in a rural clinic without enough sutures to go around.”

Soon afterward, two United Nations officials showed up at the clinic to gather information about the attack. Halima told them the truth.

A few days later, the secret police kidnapped her. “You speak to the foreigners!” one man screamed at her. They told her that she had talked of rape but knew nothing about it — yet. For days they beat her, gang-raped her, cut her with knives, burned her with cigarettes, mocked her with racial epithets. One told her, “Now you know what rape is, you black dog.”

Nonprofit Hospitals

This is an important article to read in its entirety. This monopolistic behavior is limited not only to Roanoke, VA but is also readily apparent in Reno, NV---where the largest "non-profit" hospital refuses patients without insurance for surgery, does not buy updated surgical equipment, does not provide appropriate nursing staffing, does not pay doctors for taking call for its emergency room..yet continues to make real estate investments (including buying local competitive surgical centers), pay exorbitant salaries to its "suits," and even spent a rumored 10 million dollars on a name change for "branding purposes." What can one expect when doctors are excluded from the managerial hierarchy to a great extent.
ROANOKE, Va. -- In 1989, the U.S. Department of Justice tried but failed to prevent a merger between nonprofit Carilion Health System and this former railroad town's other hospital. The merger, it warned in an unsuccessful antitrust lawsuit, would create a monopoly over medical care in the area.

Nearly two decades later, the cost of health care in the Roanoke Valley -- a region in southwestern Virginia with a population of 300,000 -- is soaring. Health-insurance rates in Roanoke have gone from being the lowest in the state to the highest.

hat's partly a reflection of Carilion's prices. Carilion charges $4,727 for a colonoscopy, four to 10 times what a local endoscopy center charges for the procedure. Carilion bills $1,606 for a neck CT scan, compared with the $675 charged by a local imaging center.

Carilion's market clout is manifest in other ways. With eight hospitals, 11,000 employees and $1 billion in assets, the tax-exempt hospital system has become one of the dominant players in the Roanoke Valley's economy. Its dozens of subsidiaries include businesses ranging from athletic clubs to a venture-capital fund.

The power of nonprofit hospital systems like Carilion over their regional communities has increased in recent years as their incomes have surged. Critics charge this is creating untaxed local health-care monopolies that drive the costs of care higher for patients and businesses.
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Originally set up to serve the poor, nonprofit hospitals account for the majority of U.S. hospitals. They are exempt from taxes and are supposed to channel income they generate back into operations, while providing benefits to their communities. But they have come under fire from patient advocates and members of Congress for stinting on charity care even as they amass large cash hoards, build new facilities and award big paychecks to their executives.

Fueled by large, untaxed investment gains, Carilion's profits have risen over the past five years, reaching $107 million last year. Over the same period, the total annual compensation of its chief executive, Dr. Murphy, nearly tripled to $2.07 million. His predecessor, Thomas Robertson, received a lump-sum pension from Carilion of $7.4 million in 2003, on top of more than $2 million in previous pension payouts.

Video of Ndere Dance Troupe

Here is a video of the Ndere dance troupe from "loreeley" on You Tube:

Dancing with Balance

Posture and Balance

The female dancers progressively balanced more and more ceramic pots on their head and then kept dancing to the frenetic, syncopated drumming

Feel the Rhythm

Let's Make Some Noise

A dancing princess

The girls

The Musicians

Choreograph This!

Flying Ndere boys

Ndere drummers

Surreal Joy and Unity in Uganda

The ultimate surreal moment was reserved for the end of the night when Mr. Ndere gathered the audience into the center of the outdoor amphitheater nation by nation (with Orbis representing perhaps appropriately its own nation).
The 300 or so attendees filed down center-stage when their country was called: "Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Germany, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo etc..."
(The lone German representative, "Sebastian," was a German resident who had come to Kenya for superior surgical training compared to that available in Germany).

Once the audience was gathered in the center of the amphitheater, Mr. Ndere had us hold the hands of those next to us and form a circle, under the night sky. (He found it amusing how difficult it was for microsurgeons to form an accurate circle).

Then after a few moments of gathering silence, the initial notes of "Amazing Grace" arose and floated on the night breeze before the Ndere troupe broke out into a beautifully harmonized version of this classic. Swaying side to side, we all joined in the singing. The Spirit of Africa and its people was quite present indeed! (I had a similarly surreal experience when I was in West Africa a year ago--see The Waterfall.")

Holding Hunter's hand on one side and Bernadette's hand on the other, I soaked in the beautifying unity of the moment.

Within a few verses, the beat became increasingly insistent and vigorous...Before we knew it the Ndere dance troupe infilitrated the circle and started pulling people into the center to dance to the now uptempo version of "Amazing Grace." The drummers held a complex, syncopated back beat as we all started dancing. Even the normally reserved Dr. Warren Anderson and Dr. Justin Arbuckle started "breaking out!" Djalene, the Orbis communication rep. was breaking it down Ethiopian style. Amelia--lithe, lissome, and languid was in her dancing element. In fact, the Minister of Health complimented her on her skilled African styled moves, to which she replied, "Why thank you Your Honor!"



A great, great night indeed...
Somehow, I doubt I will experience anything resembling this experience at the American Academy of Ophthalmology in November....

Hunter presents Orbis donation to Uganda

The Ugandan Minister of Health

Dr. Stephen Malinga, the Ugandan Minister of Health

Uganda's 1st corneal transplant patient

Veronica--a beautiful 16 year old girl who received Uganda's first corneal transplant when Orbis came here two years ago was a Guest of Honor!

A Great Cultural Event in Uganda

As Orbis Medical Director, Hunter Cherwek, has said "One of the greatest things about working for Orbis is that every month one or more of three things happen:
"I see a heart-warming sight-saving surgery; I meet an amazing Volunteer Faculty; or I experience a great travel adventure/ cultural event."


Well, my last night in Uganda we experienced one of the best cultural events one could imagine--seeing (and participating in) the great art of the Ndere Dance Troupe-- an event for the Ophthalmologic Society of Eastern Africa (OSEA) annual meeting.

Amelia (Orbis program manager), Hunter (Orbis medical director), staff ophthalmologists Warren Anderson and Bernadette Martinez, 3rd year resident Justin Arbuckle, Ethiopian country program director Djalene Temesgen and myself attended this event. Earlier in the day, Dr. Dave and myself had spoken at the OSEA meeting, which was attended by over 300 ophthalmologists from countries as diverse as Tanzania, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda.

This dinner at the Ndere Cultural Event Center was part of the OSEA program and featured spell-binding Ugandan drumming, singing, and dancing with side-splitting comedy from Mr. Ndere, a former school teacher turned comedian--all under a beautiful, summer night sky.

Featured guests included the Minister of Health and Veronica--a 16 year old girl who was Uganda's first recipient of a corneal transplant when Orbis came here 2 years ago. (You can read more about her on the Orbis blog.) Hunter and Amelia also used the evening to present the Ugandan Society of Ophthalmology with a large donation from Orbis.

A Son Goes Off To War

A touching essay by retired U.S. Marine Colonel, James Zumwalt...

For three years, I knew this day would come. I thought I would be prepared. Coming from a family whose proud military heritage dates to this country's founding, and having served in the Marines for a quarter-century and lost a brother to war-related causes, I felt ready for any challenge military life might bring.

I was not.