MAR-A-8
A NOTE OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO ANOTHER SURGEON SEEKING GLOBABL HEALTH OPPORTUNITIES
Dear Dr. George; Do you know about the activities
of Dr. Gleen Geelhoed? He is one of our
surgery professors who practices exclusively in remote areas of the developing
world. He is a brilliant surgeon and has
won international acclaim for his good work.
I would like to get the two of you together. I will email our correspondence to him and
discuss your situation as well. Best
regards, Peter Hotez
Peter J Hotez MD PhD
Professor and Chairman
Dept. Microbiology and Tropical Medicine
The George Washington University
Ross Hall, Room 736
2300 Eye St. NW
Washington DC
20037
Tel.
202-994-3532
Fax. 202-994-2913
Cellphone
202-841-3020
email mtmpjh@gwumc.edu
>>> "Ruth S. George, MD" <ruthsgeorge@txucom.net> 03/10/04 09:52PM
>>>
Dear Dr. Hotez,
It was a pleasure to come home & receive your
e-mail. I think the idea of an
Institute of Global Health is a terrific one. I
agree that little education
or attention is given to the health issues of
other countries, nor the many
compounding factors associated with them. This has
been an interest of mine
for some time, but has been one that I have tried
working on in my own
little way as I mentioned in my first e-mail to
you. I willl be going to
Monterrey, Mexico to attend a Latin American
Surgical Conference this May.
My primary goal is to learn more about how surgery
is practiced in the
countries of the presentors, speak with my
colleagues from other countries,
and of course, practice my spanish & enjoy
another culture.It also helps me
communicate with my spanish-speaking patients. I
often wonder if the border
problems we face with Mexico would be less of a
problem if we had better
relations with Mexico. Perhaps an Institute of Global
Health could have a
positive impact in many realms.It is difficult to
put into words the joy and
inner peace & satisfaction I felt while
contributing to the medical missions
in Nicaragua. I wish to strees that I am quite serious about my interest in
contributing to the development of joint ventures
in health as already
eluded to. I would be more than happy to make a
trip to D.C. & meet with you
at any time. If there is a way I can be of help, I
would very much like to
discuss it. I would just need a little advance
notice to arrange my schedule
& coverage. If there is a particular time you
feel would be appropriate, or
a meeting of interest being planned, please let me
know and I will do
everything possible to arrange my schedule to be
there. In the interim, if
there is anything in particular you would like me
to read or focus on with
regard to your goals, please feel free to let me
know.
Thank you again for taking the time to read &
respond to my
e-mail...Sincerely, Ruth George
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Hotez" <mtmpjh@gwumc.edu>
To: <ruthsgeorge@txucom.net>
Cc: "Jim Scott" <msdjls@gwumc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 9:08 AM
Subject: Your email
> Dear Dr. George; Thanks so much
for your fascinating email. Your
experiences are of great interest to
us. It might interest you to learn
that a few of us here are looking at
merging the various global health
activities at GWU into a new Institute
of Global Health. The idea is still
half-baked, but we feel that medical
students as well as students of other
health professions receive little or
no education about the health problems
in developing countries, AND
insufficient attention is given to underlying
socioeconomic problems and poverty
that go hand-in-hand with health. In the
meantime, we would love to have you
come up to visit. Let us know if your
plans take you to Wash DC in the near
future. In additon, our Dean, Jim
Scott is working at bringing back
senior alumni to host a mini-medical
school here. This might also be of interest. Thanks again for contacting
me and please stay in touch. I enjoyed your email. With best regards,
Peter
Hotez
>
> Peter J Hotez MD PhD
> Professor and Chairman
> Dept. Microbiology and Tropical
Medicine
> The George Washington University
> Ross Hall, Room 736
> 2300 Eye St. NW
> Washington DC 20037
> Tel. 202-994-3532
> Fax. 202-994-2913
> Cellphone 202-841-3020
> email mtmpjh@gwumc.edu
>
> Peter J Hotez MD PhD
> Professor and Chairman
> Dept. Microbiology and Tropical
Medicine
> The George Washington University
> Ross Hall, Room 736
> 2300 Eye St. NW
> Washington DC 20037
> Tel. 202-994-3532
> Fax. 202-994-2913
> Cellphone 202-841-3020
> email mtmpjh@gwumc.edu
>
>
>
From: Glenn Geelhoed
To: ruthsgeorge@txucom.net
Date: 3/11/04 2:26PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Institute of Global Health
Thanks for your inquiry and the spirit that motivated it in the first place!
I believe I may remember you and wondered if you could recall me from your student days at GWU under another name, but one less easy to confuse with others such as the much simpler "George!"
I thank Peter for his introduction and may have an opportunity to compare notes with you and get you some assistance in your search for a good experience as enriching as the one you described in Nicaragua. I would not overlook that experience as a primary site from which to build and expand in many other areas as well, since the site is nearly irrelevant‑‑‑there is more than enough destitute world to go around!
I am principally an Africanist, but have worked on each continent in a volunteer capacity‑‑even this one! I may give you a few leads on how to get started and introduce you to a few folk who are helpful in arranging multiple opportunities world‑wide‑‑my base of recent operation.
Is the meeting you are attending the FELAC? I had attended this biannual meeting from the time of its inception for the Federacion Latinos Ciuranos America Central y Panama.
I have a suggestion to you as to the appropriate timing of a Washington visit. In the last week of June each year, the Global Health Council meets in DC (actually often in Alexandria) for a large meeting of NGO's, multilaterals, international and every volag which come together in a conference with workshops on working in the developing world. But, a unique feature is a "matching plan." Like a dating service, this group keeps a list of registrants and links them up with a comparable group of NGO's and agencies like USAID, and they schedule interviews for you to see if the right match can be conjured up.
I would hope that your alma mater might be a centerpiece Institute of Global Health, and I am willing to be one of the first bricks in that edifice which has been long and slow in development.
I do a bit of world‑wandering myself, and can link you up with friends in very unique places in the more than one hundred mission sites I have worked in, under every conceivable kind of sponsorship. The latter have included Christian missions (some of my favorites, try Embangweni in the "CC's" above) but also Buddhist (Himalayan mission under the aegis of HH the XIVth Dali Lama), Islamic (much of my Middle Eastern and some of my African missions such as the recent one to Somaliland), Catholic (Caritas and the Mother Teresa Clinics) and Jewish (the AJDC in Addis Ababa) I have also spent a couple of years of my adult life in Africa in a volunteer capacity collectively over a series of these missions and also a year as Senior Fulbright Scholar for the continent.
I had sent you a prior message for m an earlier "wannabe" with some references to programs to get into and wold recommend to someone with surgical skills they would like to employ in a nearly round the. clock effort to check with a number of my friends such as Alan Mellicor, Adam Kushner, and several others I will list separately in email copies. Laji Varghese at Lady Willingdon Hospital is a superb surgeon in the kind of setting you would enjoy, and Bill Barrett can tell you what it is like to be operating in this setting.
I have written a book you should have entitled "Surgery and Healing in the Developing World" which will be published by Landes BioScience in the next months, and you should check with them since they are near you in Georgetown Texas.
You can consult with a couple of my students now graduates who have operated in such settings that they shared that rewarding return you had experienced in Nicaragua‑‑John Sutter and Kevin Bergman and Amy Hayes as well as Elizabeth Yellen can describe their experiences Harold Adolph has worked most of his professional life in settings from Niger to Ethiopia. Charles Woodrow is working in a new hospital of his own making in Mozambique. Doug Soderdahl is active in pursuing dozens of missions each year as I do, he through his own organization of Global Medical Missions. Edgar Rodas runs Cinterandes, and is a like‑minded surgeon friend of mine who is past Minister of Health of Ecuador and would be worth emailng with your interest.
I may append a series of scenarios on what you might expect to be doing as a volunteer surgeon‑‑and I will list a recent example from Berbera in Somaliland in the attachment.
You can pick up a lot more of the flavor and the substance of the kinds of missions that are possible by checking into the Home page http://home.gwu.edu/~gwg and clicking on the "On‑Line Journal" or also checking the web page www.gwu.edu/~intmeded I wrote an article entitled "Wanted World Class Surgeons" in the Bulletin of the ACS which you can pull up from the archives from five years ago, or check the JACS Oct. 2001v192:417‑‑427 The ACS has become very much more interested and supportive as you have seen from the clinical congresses and the journals and I have attempted to keep a registry of opportunities open for those interested in pursuing them.
You might also check the attachment "Welcome to the Wonder World of International Medical Experience" for further suggestions and references, and I also attach my contact points so that you might be able to follow up on any of these that interest you.
I thank you, and thank Peter Hotez for putting us in touch, and I hope I can help you along the way toward your dreams of helping a hurting world!
I encourage you to get well started on an even more rewarding response to your continuing efforts in mission medicine!
GWG