04-SEP-A-4
From: Glenn Geelhoed
To: Jeanne E. Wiebenga
Date: 9/3/04 11:28AM
Subject: Re: Fwd: RE: I take the liberty
Wonderful!
I have just the place for
you and just the person for you to meet!
In the "CC"
overhead, I have put the email address of Edna Adan, Foreign Minister, and
former First Lady of Somaliland, who has dedicated her life to reducing
childhood and maternal mortality in Hargeisa, and has founded and continues to
support a wonderful new hospital which bears her name.
If you can write directly to
her, I will also try to facilitate a visit, and perhaps even one we might be
able to undertake together, since I am getting tugged back toward the Horn of
Africa.
I had just this week
corresponded with Edna who is back at home now after a period in London, since
I had asked her help; I have been asked to give Ob/Gyn Grand Rounds at George
Washington University in subjects in which I seem to have no business intruding
in this part of the developed world, but which seems to occupy quite a number
of my efforts in the developing world‑‑in obstructed labors and
consequences thereof. So, I had sought
some advice and illustration materiels form Edna and would like you to get to
know her and the fine work she is heading there in Hargeisa.
I know the work of the
Hamlins, and had visited the Hospital by the River in Addis when last I went
through when Catherine was abroad. I am
also interested in a possible excursion to Sudan soon, but will have a number
of obligations keeping me closer to DC, with frequent shorter excursions to
Mindanao and Leyte Philippines, Malawi, and a return to Haiti. I will attach a Power Point brief
presentation that my senior medical students who had been with me on multiple
missions had assembled after our Somaliland excursion, and also a report on
what the recent trip to Haiti had done to transform a group of first time
students who accompanied me.
Let me hear more and we will
try to work up a collaborative effort toward Africa!
Cheers!
GWG
>>> "Jeanne E.
Wiebenga" <jwiebenga@yahoo.com> 09/03/04 10:49AM >>>
Good Day Glenn,
so nice of you to send me an
email! I recently met Russ at his hospital where I went for an interview. Later
I realized I had seen him many times at the local gym, where we are both
working out.
We had a glorious Chautauqua
season & this was the first time I had taken off all summer to attend the
lectures, concerts, play in the golf league, sail & kayak & meet
strangers.
Yes, I am a native of
Friesland, Leeuwarden & later moved to Delft when where my Dad was chief
public health officer as he had been in Friesland. I went to med school in
Leiden, worked in Ghana for Memisa from 1977‑81, got my MPH at Harvard,
then completed my residency at SUNY (Buffalo) & during my third year I
learned VVF repairs in Nigeria from Sr Dr Ann Ward (Irish nun of the Medical
Missionaries of Mary). She has one of the largest series in the world and I
still treasure the slides I made of her reapirs: outstanding surgeon &
still going strong in her 70's. I have never been to the Hamlin's in Ethiopia
but of course am very familiar with their work.
From 1989‑92 I worked
in Malawi at QECH in Blantyre, where we did lots of VVF/RVF repairs, with Dries
van der Meulen (now retired from Amsterdam Free University) & Frank Newell
(from Ashville, NC, good friend of John Kelly) who was a regular visitor, and
Karen Crabtree, now in Chinle, AZ.. You probably are familiar with some of
them.
From 1992‑2000 I was
in private practice in Jamestown, but decided that was too provincial for me
& I have been doing locums around the globe since then, incl. Australia,
Alaska and a few trips back to my old hospital in Ghana. I very much like to
stay involved with that type of medicine in Africa, or Asia, and if you have
any suggestions for me, I would love to hear about it!
I am currently doing a short
locum in a tiny town in NY, just read your note & printed out some of your
articles. I have been an avid photographer for all my Africa years & am
thinking about getting my own website, or publish my photo's/slides in a book
or so, just haven't figured out how to go about all that.
I will read your articles at
home & hope to stay in touch, even see you here at our paradise ? (at least
from May till October)
groeten,
Jeanne Wiebenga
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