A team of 23 surgeons from the United States of America (USA) is conducting free surgeries on patients with neck tumors that are complex and very expensive to treat in Malindi Sub County of Kilifi County.
The annual surgical camp is organized by Caris Foundation a Kenyan Non Governmental organization that is working to alleviate poverty in Kilifi County together with Tawfiq hospital the host and aims at treating patients who have suffered years with tumors that could not be treated by the local doctors.
The Surgical camp has also brought together 25 Kenyan Surgeons from Nairobi and Malindi including medical lecturers who get a chance to learn how to conduct complex surgeries and pass the knowledge to other medical students across the country.
Since the Surgical camp began over a decade ago more than 5000 patients with neck tumors and other ailments have benefitted and this year the doctors target 70 during their two-week medical camp.
Malindi MP Amina Mnyazi toured the Tawfiq hospital in Malindi to witness the ongoing surgeries and revealed that she was impressed by the exercise as it not only helped the ailing patients but also enabled Kenyan surgeons to learn the process.
She thanked Caris Foundation, the USA, Kenyan doctors, and the Tawfiq hospital for coming up with the initiative that is going a long way to support treating her constituents who have been suffering for a long time.
“These surgeons have not only come to do the surgeries but there are our doctors who are also learning so they have come to pass knowledge too,” she said.
Mnyazi called on students who want to study Oncology so that she can support them get scholarships.
Mnyazi said the awareness has helped end the belief that such compicated ailments are a result of witchcraft adding that she wants to begin a cancer awareness campaign to help people be screened early.
Prof James Netterville from Vanderbilt University USA who is leading the team of ENT surgeons said the teachers from the US visit to teach doctors in Kenya so that a time will come they would no longer have to come.
He said they attend to patients with a very huge head and neck tumors some of which are cancerous and hard to treat in Kenya.
Netterville who has been in the country over 30 times to do the surgeries said they work with Tawfiq hospital which provides the theaters and space for the patients together with Caris Foundation to make the surgical camps a success.
He said in the team they have senior professors including some from Havard, Indiana, and Vanderbilt among other states to teach the Kenyan lecturess how to conduct such surgeries.
“We have been coming here since 2008, in some years we came twice a year for two weeks my wife said I spend 30 days of my life in Kenya each year she was mad at me,” he said
As experts, he said they would have conducted more surgeries very fast but they slow down the process such that in two weeks they are able to do 70 major operations so that the Kenyan surgeons can participate in the process.
The patients they target range from children to the elderly with rare tumors in the head and neck adding that this year most of the cases were complex such as an 11-month-old child who had a tumor on the side of the head that was as big as his head.
“We have just treated a young lady from Nairobi whose windpipe completely collapsed completely dependent on a tracheotomy tube and we took out a large portion of her windpipe and put it back together so now her tracheotomy tube is out and she can take care of her four children without having her breathing through her neck, “he said.
Jim Repart from the Caris Foundation Malindi said their organization has been in Kenya since 2008 with their major goal being to help people in empowerment out of poverty.
he said the surgical camp became very important in 2009 when Netterville became available together with other general surgeons.
“We concentrated on head and neck because that was a specific need in Kenya to empower Kenyan doctors by teaching them and raising the level in ENT care,” he said.
Since 2009 he said they have done more than 2000 complex surgeries at the Tawfiq hospital.
The CEO of Tawfiq Hospital in Malindi Ahmed Aboud said over 300 patients were screened and expect at the end they will complete 70 patients.
Aboud said such camps are important in reducing the cases which are rampant in Malindi and Kilifi County.
“Am happy with the cooperation that we have with the county government and the political leaders as they will help us reach out to more patients in the grassroots to get treatment,” he said.
