Israel shares medical expertise with Africa

A Ugandan trainee (Magen David Adom)

MDA Trains Uganda Red Cross Instructors

Last week, MDA instructors qualified 16 trainees, volunteers in the Uganda Red Cross, as first aid and basic and advanced level resuscitation instructors. These Ugandan instructors will in the future teach advanced studies to the other volunteers and in communities in Uganda.

This project is part of the collaboration between MDA in Israel and the Uganda Red Cross Society, and is intended to increase first aid capabilities within the country. It also will serve as a basis for further projects which will improve the urgent first aid services offered to the Uganda population.

The Uganda Red Cross Society and MDA have prepared a multi-annual collaboration plan, which focuses on a number of principal issues: training first aid instructors for the Uganda Red Cross and setting up a training center; an EMT (ambulance drivers) course; blood donation drives; training Uganda Red Cross volunteer youth in multi-casualty incident management.

After the first phase of the plan to qualify the first aid instructors was completed, a formal ceremony was held in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, with the participation of the Uganda Minister of Health, the Chairman of the Uganda Red Cross, the Secretary General of the Uganda Red Cross, Israel's Ambassador to Kenya, the Chairman of MDA's Executive Committee and the members of the Israeli delegation.

The first aid instructor's course was taught by three paramedic instructors from MDA's Medical Division, headed by the Director of the Training Department. The course lasted ten days, with a total of 100 hours of study.

Thanks to the assistance of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the International Red Cross, MDA was able to extend aid in the form of new and advanced training equipment for the qualifying course and continued use by the future training center. This equipment included a wide range of resuscitation mannequins (adult, children and infant), canulation and birthing exercise mannequins, resuscitation equipment and masks, first aid packs, backboards, head immobilizers and an automatic external defibrillator.

Dr. Noam Yifrach, Chairman of MDA's Executive Committee, noted that the Uganda Red Cross expressed its immense gratitude for MDA's presence in Uganda, and that they have every intention to maintain the good ambience and unique friendship created by the two societies in order to advance further projects in Uganda. Dr. Yifrach added: "I believe that our contribution in training the instructors will in the future generate upgraded first aid services offered by the Uganda Red Cross for the welfare of the citizens, and will certainly enhance the tight and friendly relations between both countries in various and diverse subjects."

Dr. Michael Alkan examines a patient in Botswana (Israel 21c)

Israeli doctor declares war on AIDS in Africa

By Allison Kaplan Sommer - Israel 21c

When Dr. Michael Alkan received the invitation to join the front lines of the war on AIDS in Africa by setting up clinics in a remote village nestled in the desert plains of Botswana, the response of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev professor was immediate. "When does the next plane leave?" he asked.

The professor at the university's Faculty of Center for Health Sciences and Soroka University Medical Center and a world-renowned expert on AIDS doesn't let long stretches of time pass without boarding an airplane. In the past, the 64-year-old Israeli has helped set up a medical school in rural Kenya, and worked under the most difficult conditions in Ecuador, Nepal, and Papua, New Guinea, Thailand and Cambodia. Most recently he was on the ground in Southeast Asia providing relief to the tsunami victims. "I guess you could say my 'hobby' is providing health care to the Third World," he said.

Of all the projects he's undertaken over the years, he regards his recent mission in Botswana to set up AIDS clinics as the most important medical work of his career, potentially affecting the lives of millions.

Alkan, incumbent of the BGU Werner J. and Charlotte A. Gunzburger Chair for the Study of Infectious Diseases and founder of the infectious diseases unit at Soroka, was handpicked by the Israeli branch of the Merck, Sharpe and Dohme pharmaceutical giant, to join an international team that is working to save Botswana, and create a model of treatment that can be replicated across Africa, a continent that is literally dying every moment.

Alkan joined his counterparts and for an orientation process, and was then sent to the town of Ranzi in the middle of the Kalahari Desert for two months to set up a clinic and train its staff. His work was so successful, he returned later for another month to the town of Gamara, which is even more remote.

Alkan's mission was not only to teach the local staff the technicalities of AIDS treatment, but to inspire them to convince their countrymen to be tested and to fight the disease, and not surrender to it fatalistically. But despite those obstacles, Alkan has seen progress in the clinics he created. In Gamara, by the time he was finished with his stint, there were 300 patients coming regularly to the new clinic and sticking faithfully to the regimen that was keeping them alive. Two years ago, only 3500 Botswans who were being treated with the AIDS cocktail, now 19 clinics are up and running and treating 33,000 patients. The most important patients are pregnant women, who by getting treatment, can avoid passing the virus to their unborn children.

Alkan says that he and the other participants will only truly consider this program a success if it is taken and replicated in other African countries. And he's ready to hop on any plane that will make that happen.

Courtesy http://www.israel21c.org/