During my time as a surgeon at Frankfurt Höchst Hospital, I got to know Dr. Wiltrud Spring, who had been sponsoring the son of a doctor, Dr. Mdeme, from Tanzania for several years, thus enabling him to study medicine.
For several decades, Dr. Mdeme was the head doctor at the hospital in Gonja, a small village at an altitude of 1700m in the middle of the Paramountains. For reasons of age, he gave up his work at the hospital about 2 years before we arrived. We were able to organize the mission through Dr. Spring, who established the contact, and Dr. Mdeme on site.
Our team consisted of 7 people:
Dr. Klaus Exner, Dr. Zeynep Altayli and I, Dr. Bianca Baican as plastic surgeons, Dr. Axel Fischer and Dr. Livia Köhler, as anaesthetists, Mr. Bernd Winters as social worker and Dorothee Köhler as operating room nurse
The hospital had been built in the 1950s by a mission from Leipzig and was already very dilapidated at the time of our first mission. Termites had already attacked large parts of the load-bearing wooden beams, the sterilizer was not working and the operating theatre was relatively old and dilapidated.
For most of us, it was our first contact with Africa. After our arrival in Arusha at the foot of Kilimanjaro, we organized transport to Same, the bishop's residence, who was waiting for us. He provided us with two cars to take our team of 8 to the hospital together with our luggage and around 25 boxes of surgical and dressing materials. From Arusha to Same it was a well-built road, from Same to our place of work, Gonja, it was a bumpy sandy track, so that our transportation took a whole day. When we arrived at the hospital, it was already dark. We began to unload our luggage and noticed that more and more people were gathering around us with questioning faces. Finally the hospital director, Dr. Amini, was informed and asked us who we were and what we wanted to do. Somewhat surprised, we explained that we were the team from Germany coming to operate. He remembered having heard something like that and said that he hadn't expected us to actually come. So no accommodation had been organized for us.
Completely tired and exhausted from the long journey, we moved into our makeshift quarters in the local guesthouse, quite disappointed and discouraged. It looked more like a prison with a wooden crate in front of the windows from the outside, a huge lock on the door that could also only be closed from the outside and two beds per room with a light bulb on the ceiling. The sanitary facilities were in the corridor and consisted of an Arab toilet and a pipe sticking out of the ceiling with a tap running ice-cold water.
The next day we started our work, unpacked our luggage and examined the first patients. We were assisted by Sister Mariam, who spoke good English and was able to translate for us. She was also a great help in organizing the patients and changing the dressings. Dr. Altayli and she immediately became friends and formed a good team.
On the very first morning after our arrival, we asked Bernd Winters to run to the nearest village and find a telephone so that we could at least let our families know that we had arrived safely. At the hospital there was neither a telephone line nor a functioning network to enable us to contact the outside world. This probably also explained the lack of communication during our mission.
Bernd Winter received a list of all our telephone numbers and set off on a 4-hour walk to the next village.
A 10-day operation was planned, for which initially few patients presented themselves. This was probably due to the healthy mistrust of the population, who first wanted to see that the first operations went well. One of our first patients was a teacher from the local school, who had a large tumor removed from his head. His operation went without complications, so that in the following days we had more and more patients, some of whom presented with very rare clinical pictures.
We usually operated on two tables at the same time. Our patients came with various tumors, benign and malignant, with burns and clubfeet. In the 10 days of our mission, we operated on around 70 patients. On the last day in the Para Mountains, we took a short trip to the neighboring mountain peak in the light and were able to enjoy the beautiful African landscape from up there, which consisted of a vast plain without any buildings.
While in hospital, we were presented with a 6-month-old girl, Mariam, with a chest that was not completely closed and only a membranous covering over her heart and lungs. During the induction of anaesthesia, Dr. Fischer discovered that there was another malformation, namely a connection between the trachea and the esophagus. So we had to stop the induction of anesthesia. We told the mother that we would try to collect donations and bring the child to Germany so that we could take care of it here.
Back in Germany, we found a family from Tanzania who had agreed to take Mariam and her mother in for the duration of the treatment. Together with Klinikum Höchst, we were able to organize the operation and care in the children's intensive care unit. Mariam's family now had to apply for a passport and an exit permit for mother and child. This took so long that Mariam unfortunately died the day before she was due to fly to Germany.
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