I will never forget that day my partner and I emerged from thick jungle vegetation that enshrouded an obscured footpath with but the faintest idea of what lay ahead. Beneath an enormous niim tree, a young boy lay listlessly draped over the lap of his father. With both urgency and extreme care a traditional healer cleaned and dressed the boy's ulcerated leg with dried leaves. Alerted to our presence, the father looked up, and seeing us, his eyes began to swell with tears of hope. The ulcer was already in the later stages, extending from his inner thigh to mid-calf. Severe anemia and dehydration further compounded the gravity of the situation and death seemed imminent. However, refusing to accept this harsh reality, we transported the boy to a hospital, hoping we could preserve his life just long enough for HART surgeons to arrive and perform the complicated skin grafting procedures that were needed.

Fate, however, seemed to have her own plans. On a warm Saturday evening, young Joseph quietly passed away. Words cannot describe how helpless we felt as we later explained the young boy's death to his parents. Unfortunately, with no available vaccine or drug to treat this horrible disease, this scene will be repeated in countless villages throughout West Africa. However, each year dozens of HART volunteers travel to these villages, devoting countless hours to organizing grass-root community awareness and education campaigns, conducting social research, training local health care providers, and performing life saving surgeries. Although we are far from seeing the end of this disease, we are making amazing progress. I take great pride in knowing that as a student volunteer, I can contribute to this progress.

—Parker Fillmore
Student Volunteer

As a plastic surgeon I have been on several mission trips outside of the United States to operate on various congenital diseases and acquired deformities. The most valuable trips for me have been those which included education of the local medical personnel and people so that the medical/surgical care I start can be continued. It is one thing to change a single childs life, but in doing so you educate others to continue to effect those changes then you have left a legacy.

My operative skills may have helped a few on my trip with HART to Ghana, but the education of local physicians, the outreach to local villages, and the providing of medical equipment to local hospitals continues to improve care for those with the Buruli Ulcer long after I am forgotten. I hope to travel with HART again soon, and offer my continued support at any time.

—Melinda Haws, MD

The most important and lasting inpression from our medical relief trip to Ghana waas the extreme poverty that this West African nation is faced with. The differences between the medical care available in the U.S. and Dunkwa, the village in which we worked, were profound.

For example many patients were lucky if they had a bed rather than a mat on the floor. The patients ate only if family or friends could prepare food.
Any medication was a luxury, particularly pain medication. No lab tests were available. The operating room had two fifty-year old operating tables with rusting parts. The hospital did not have disposable operating room items. (My guess is that the disposable items we brought were cleaned and reused upon our departure).

When I feel the stress of a long day's work, I take out my photo album from Ghana , relive the experiences, say a prayer of gratitude for my life and hope that our work in Ghana can continue and grow in magnitude.

—Mary Mastin, M.D.
General Surgeon, V.A. Hospital
Salt Lake City, Utah

We would like to comment the benevolent work done by HART in the control of Buruli Ulcer in the Central Region of Ghana. This organization has been able to organize both materials and human resources to offer free medical and surgical care. We are appealing to others to express the same degree of concern to contribute personally or channel their support through the HART team to sustain theri efforts to control the disease in this area.

—Dr. Erasmus Yao Klutse
District Director of Health Services
Dunkwa, Ghana

Summer In Ghana
The weather was hot, and sweat was dripping down my back, but I was happy to be there. This was a hospital unlike any other I had seen, small and in need of repair. I looked out the window and saw patients dressed in bright African fabric; they waved hello and beamed welcoming smiles. I had always dreamed of traveling to Africa as part of a medical team, and I was amazed I was finally there.

When I was a sophomore in college, I discovered a group called the Humanitarian Aid Relief Team (HART) that gives students the opportunity to help patients afflicted with the Buruli ulcer (a devastating mycobacterium skin-disease) in Ghana. I started volunteering for the group in October 1999 and signed up for the next medical trip.

Our team consisted of eight students, three nurses, a nurse anesthetist, and two general surgeons. Our mission was to go to the Dunkwa Governmental Hospital and work with Ghanaian nurses and doctors to perform debridements and skin grafts on patients inflicted with the Buruli ulcer. Our first night, the two surgeons explained that because of the delicate nature of the surgeries, although we would help most people with the surgeries, we might also be inadvertently hurting a number of people. That was a risk I had never even considered. However, it soon became evident that sometimes complications did arise. The important thing, though, was that the good we could accomplish outweighed the bad.

It was fascinating participating in the surgeries. As students, we alternated between prepping the patients for surgery, assisting the doctors in the operating room, and nursing the patients in the recovery room following surgery. Each morning many more people lined up to receive surgery than we could possibly operate on during our stay. On my way to the isolation ward, patients would plead with me to help them. I felt envious of the doctors and sad that I didn’t have the knowledge or capability to help. I realized I would never feel like I was living life fully if I weren’t helping people in a medical profession.

One small girl named Caya touched me deeply. She had a very serious case of Buruli on her leg that prevented her from walking, and she was weak and sickly. The operations were traumatic for Caya. White-skinned Americans, wearing masks and speaking a foreign language, would take her to a room full of strange equipment and cause her additional pain. It got to the point that whenever members of our team entered the isolation ward, she would cry. We successfully performed three or four surgeries, but the day before we left she contracted a bacterial infection that caused her skin grafts to go bad. Nevertheless, the morning we left she handed me a small metal bowl, covered with a white doily and containing a dozen or so small eggs, neatly lined up. I realized what a privilege it is to offer medical services to people
This past summer I returned to Ghana to study the people’s beliefs regarding the origin of the Buruli ulcer, what kind of treatments they seek, and what hardships Buruli causes in their daily lives. It was amazing to live in the people’s element, away from electricity, running water, transportation, and even medical treatment. Many people assumed we were medical doctors and came to us with their problems—Buruli, fevers, body aches, tumors, etc.—only to be told we were students who didn’t have the knowledge and ability to treat them. It was hard to be tied down in these situations because of ignorance.

One especially humbling case was a three-year-old boy who had been having convulsions. His parents took him to one of the fetish priests to see if he could treat the convulsions, and the priest agreed to let us observe some of the healing ritual. When we came on the scene, a small group of people were gathered around a small cauldron and were splashing water all over the small boy’s body. He was only semi-conscious, and his body was limp and pale. I immediately recognized that the situation was critical and the boy was teetering toward death. I felt helpless, so I encouraged the people to hire a taxi to take the boy to the hospital two hours away—but I feared the boy wouldn’t make it. More than ever, I wished I were a doctor. I very much wanted to help this boy. The next morning, our translator informed us that the boy died only minutes after he arrived at the hospital. If I were a trained physician, would I have been able to save this child’s life?

It is a privilege to live in a place where education is readily available and opportunities abound. I want to take advantage of this knowledge and go to medical school to become a physician, and with this knowledge I want to make a difference in individual lives, both at home and abroad. It takes training, it takes ability, and it takes desire. Helping others who are suffering physically and emotionally is a sacred privilege, and I will dedicate my life to it.

—Jeff Bigelow
President of HART Volunteer Chapter