hernias! We set up three O.R. tables in one room…just like in the T.V. show, “M.A.S.H.” What an experience! We had no choice but to make it work, both for us and the patients! This was their only opportunity for free healthcare…any care!

The next site was at Terabor General Hospital in Gokana LGA, Rivers State, a community of about 400,000 people in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria where Dr. Gbaanador was born and raised. There, we joined a group of 45 Nigerian healthcare professionals and volunteers from Pro-Health International (www.prohealthinternational.org)…a faith-based NGO that provides year-round free health care throughout Nigeria and neighboring countries. They travel to rural areas, bringing everything needed to provide medical, surgical, ophthalmologic, dental care and counseling to the poor and needy. They bring everything needed (dental chairs, OR tables, mobile Lab, equipment, medical/surgical supplies and pharmaceuticals along with two generators in the trucks. On the first day it took about three hours just to unpack and set up everything and about the same to break-down, pack, and reload at the end of the five-day project. At Terabor we performed surgery on 90 patients (not counting the dental and ophthalmic operations) in five days! At the completion of the medical mission we were very tired, very gratified and felt fulfilled. We barely scratched the surface of the healthcare needs this community…but we certainly made a difference in the lives of the ones we were able to serve, free of charge. 

I returned to America with a renewed commitment to medical missionary work. I will return to Uganda in 2008 with Dr. Daniel. I plan to work with ACMMI and Pro-Health International in the future. I hope and pray that one day, we can take medical students and residents from Texas Tech University or other teaching hospitals on such missions. I guarantee that the experience will have a profound positive effect on these young healthcare providers in-training as it had on me. The benefits cannot be measured…they are life-long.