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Dr. Mario Uribe, Head of Liver Transplant Program al Hospital Calvo Mackenna. |
Dedicate own leisure time to help needed people is exactly what Dr. Uribe did in his trip to Liberia, Africa in November, 2006.
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Interview made by Claudia Palm Del C. |
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“I was educated in a school where the value of helping others were related with the area you were specialist, in other way, all of us could give money to this or that institution but that one professional who is able to build a project to support an specific cause is unique and that is what you must give to others.
Thus emphasizes Dr. Uribe, Head of Liver Transplant Program al Hospital Calvo Mackenna, the reason to fill the application of “MSF” and travel to Liberia, Africa, one of the poorest countries in the world and living there for 3 months.
His enthusiasm is so high when he is talking about this subject and so the emotion remembering the experience lived there, that this interview was developed as a talk. In that way, this article would not have more interventions except him, and his memories:
“I’m adult surgeon but I learned transplants in France and in Belgium I learned children transplants. Living in Paris, I met a surgeon, who has been in Afghanistan with the worldwide organization MSF (Medicals with no Frontiers), I was interested in this activity and filled my application. I was accepted and at middle of November of 2006 I went to Liberia. |
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22 hours of job |
Arriving there you suffer an impact because of the poverty you found everywhere. The city has no electric light most of their places, it has no potable water and I spend more than a month having shower with cold water and a jar.
My function was to work at surgeon area at the hospital MSF has there. This is an old church adapted as a hospital, supported with French technology, so operating room instrumental were good, there are good medicines, but with no monitors, no scanner, no endoscope, no mechanic ventilator and sometimes, at the end of a long surgery of several hours and with everything |
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going fine, patient was not prepared to breath by himself, you need a ventilator, there was no one, and at last, the patient died with no doubt. The necessity was so big, one day I was there for 22 hours with no rest, with a half an hour to get lunch and half an hour to get dinner. One day I made 18 surgeries and in another opportunity I worked for over 20 hours and made 22 surgeries.¡¡¡
Even they were medium complex surgery, I did everything, so you must be technically, well prepared.
I had to surged from neck, thorax, pericardial punitions, peritonitis, ulcers, hernias, legs, fingers and arms amputations, skin implantation, support in caesareans, really any case that arrived with a surgery indication, you must treat it.
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Professionals and Destiny Renovation |
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The time consumption here is so hard, in over 25 days I did 380 surgeries, that means 20 by day, it is impossible to develop another academically, trainer or scientific activity. So that, they send another general doctors with the mission to educate and teach to the population, they have also inoculation programs and AIDS prevention programs, but they stay for longer periods.
Now, with this hospital in particular, there is something special, because it goes to closed in July this year 2007. After the end of civil war in 2003- which affected Liberia for 14 years- MSF should have been retired from the country- but that decision had left with no defense civil people, so they decided to stay. |
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Nevertheless, now there is a hospital donated and supported by Kennedy Foundation, they are training their people, has a University and they are going to assume this role, so MSF will go to areas with more necessity.
This process would be in charge of the new medical director of the hospital, an Austrian, intellectually brilliant, married, with adults daughters, who was a Professor in intensive and oncologist medicine at Viena University, after his retired, he decided to go 6 months to Africa with the dream to maintain the last mission and closed the hospital .
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Marvelous experience of Life. |
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I haven’t ever work so hard in my entire life, but the satisfaction to give a specialized service was amazing¡ I this poorest countries access to surgery is a little income, I could give it, so I’m quite sure it was a good decision.
Maybe, many people wonder why not to do it here in Chile? And the answer is: Chile has surgeons, so the decision to make it in countries where they have nothing.
As a life experience is wonderful. You met people from all over the world and all of them with the same motivation, it makes you grow and enriched deeply. |
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In a professional view, it is also a big learning, make 380 surgeries in a month and a half, with a minor percentage of mortality in that kind of reality, without an infrastructure it was really a challenger.
Nevertheless, my surgery expertise at Hospital Salvador, in a time where we had a few tools and where you learn in the clinic dairy, listen patients history, watching them well, reading labs tests, feel abdomen, auscultate thorax, and made decisions in order to take or not a patient to pavilion was very useful for my living in Liberia.
Another thing was the love my patients had me and with whom I loved, too. Some of them were chronicle patients, burning children with many treatments, some of them must have been taken to surgery with another surgeon, because I am back.
Finally, you go to this places to give something to another, but you also enriched enormously, that’s why I want to go back in 2008. At the beginning of that year I must define the date I’ll be available and they decide where I go to contribute with my knowledge and aptitudes, I not refuse war zones, so could be any where. |
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MSF ( Medical without Frontiers) |
This organization has as a purpose to help in the most extremes conditions of medical needed, normally conflicts, wars, revolutions, natural disasters, and so on.
In 1999 got Peace Nobel , has a big amount of medical doctors belonging to 35 countries who go to different missions of aid, and in the last years has been chosen as one of the most trustable in the world.
It finances with donations of individuals, close to 350.000 people, who donate between 5 or 100 euros weekly, having religious, political or organizational independency.
Because of this independence, their collaborator must be free of ideologies of any kind.
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The candidate decides the date he/she wants to travel and could refuse to go to war zones, but organization resolves where to send its people, with a few time of warning.
They do not pay professional salary, but they covered all the expenses and give a little amount in cash ( US dollars), for a few costs, such as transportation.
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Liberia, África |
Is a very poor country, it was bought to Sri Lanka by President Monroe, in order to get back the free slaves to África to not stay in USA, so it was called LIBERIA ( for freedom), and the capital is called Monrovia, in honor to Monroe.
It has 4 millions of inhabitants, its expectative of life is 42 years old and the illiteracy among women is of 65% and among men is 35%. It has higher levels of violence. “ |
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