 Giving Back – A Doctor’s Annual Trip to Ghana
In March, GLFHC clinician Vince Waite, accompanied by 3rd-year resident Dorothy DeGuzman, traveled to northern Ghana where they spent three weeks in the remote village of Nalerigu. In this village, resources are scarce. Homes consist of huts constructed with mud. Situated among these simple buildings, however, is a hospital that has been serving the people of the region for over 60 years. Baptist Medical Center is a full-service medical facility where patients receive medicines, deliver babies, receive Public Health services, and undergo surgeries. It is also the only clinic of its kind for a hundred miles and, on clinic days, staff care for as many as 500 patients a day.
People come from hundreds of miles—by buses, rented cars, donkey carts, bicycles, and sometimes by crowding into the backs of pickup trucks, to be seen at the Baptist Hospital. Dr. Waite’s annual three-week visit offers Baptist’s staff and providers the chance for a break from the endless scores of patients arriving with illnesses. He and Dr. DeGuzman replaced physicians, working in the hospital days and nights. For another American group, it would be nearly impossible to assimilate into the culture of this secluded village, with foreign traditions, an isolated language, and diseases uncommon to the American health care system. For this group, however, the guidance of Dr. Waite proves invaluable to their experience. “As a young missionary, I spent fifteen years of my medical career living and practicing in this very village. I planned and shaped my medical education in preparation for working in Africa,” explained Waite. He obtained degrees in both family medicine and public health, fueled by his desire to work in Nalerigu. From 1983 to 1998, Dr. Waite raised his children among native Ghanaians, fluently spoke the local language Mampruli, and treated the people for a wide range of health issues, often performing life-saving surgical procedures. For the past 7 years, Waite has been returning to volunteer in this place he still considers his home. Many of the clinic patients know Waite, and come to clinic just to see him—sometimes there’s several generations in a family who have all been his patients. For the providers that accompany Waite, it’s a chance to work in a severely underserved area, to donate time and effort caring for the poor, to bring a clinician’s skills and knowledge to a setting so deprived that patients often need to sell goats or sheep to pay for medical care. For residents, it’s also hands-on experience, learning and employing medical procedures they would have few occasions to practice in the United States.
According to Dr. DeGuzman, the opportunity was the most intensive educational experience she’s ever had because of the volume of patients, the range of diseases, and the procedural and triaging skills needed. On a typical clinic day, the Baptist Hospital opens in the morning to hundreds of patients who are treated throughout the day. Clinic can last twelve hours. Those who require surgical procedures are operated on in the evenings. Ghanaians don’t come to the clinic for colds or coughs. For those that make the trip, the acuity of care is much higher – women arrive ready to deliver babies; some patients present with huge abscesses or open wounds, only the severity of which finally drove them to the hospital; others have hernias that require immediate interventions.
On the first day in clinic, Drs. Waite and DeGuzman treated three Typhoid perforations and one ruptured uterus. While Dr. Waite is a faculty member and preceptor in the GLFHC Residency program, Dr. DeGuzman says that he is usually quiet and reserved. In Ghana, however, she says, Vince is a celebrity of sorts, always being stopped and greeted by the local residents who remember him and look forward to his yearly visits. Dorothy jokes, “We couldn’t go to the market with him because what should have been a short excursion would turn into a 3-4 hour trip as locals clamored for his attention, stopping him every few minutes to talk and welcome him home.” They call him Doctor Tia which means tree, which symbolizes the spirits of the village. For him, the symbolism is important as he views the trips as both medical and spiritual adventures.
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