At Paces Plastic Surgery most of the patients are women seeking face-lifts, breast augmentation, liposuction and other cosmetic procedures. Many of them simply want to look better in a bathing suit.
But one day earlier this month the waiting room at Paces was dominated by a spunky 5-year-old in a pink sweater and plaid skirt, making faces and chattering in Arabic.
Sedra Afifi Shakarnah was at the center for burn reconstructive surgery, to ease the scars on her throat, shoulders, arms and chest. She simply wanted to be able to use her own arms to brush her own dark hair.
Though the incisions from follow-up surgery — one of four she’s had since she was burned in a household accident at age 3 — were still fresh, Sedra was in grand spirits during this post-op visit.
Arafat and Cherie Imam, who hosted the girl and her mother at their Lawrenceville home, accompanied them to the Paces center and helped translate for Dr. Kristin Boehm, a plastic surgeon, and Dr. Naureen Adam, an anesthesiologist. (When Sedra blew kisses, she needed no translation.)
“Anybody who meets that child is in love with her,” said a beaming Arafat. An engineer with the Southern Co., he is also a member of the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, which helped pay to bring Sedra to Georgia from her modest home in Bethlehem on Israel’s West Bank. Boehm and Adam donated their services and the surgical center donated space in the clinic for the procedures.
The result: Freed from frozen scar tissue, Sedra can lift her arms above her head.
This kind of medical mission is not that unusual. Every day, doctors donate services to patients in need in the U.S. and abroad. After last year’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, Boehm was among many physicians moved to try to help in some way.
Many more will offer their services to the people of earthquake-shattered Japan. But even in the absence of any natural disaster, the need for skilled medical help in impoverished parts of the world continues.
Dr. John Kelley, an orthopedic surgeon with a solo practice in Tucker, has made several trips each year to a hospital in Comayaguas, Honduras, working among “the poorest of the poor.” He performs between 32 and 48 surgeries over the course of a week, repairing tendons, correcting club feet and changing the lives of children and adults.
He works at a hospital established by Franciscan friars, with modern equipment and supplies.
“You could pick it up and move it to Buckhead and do plastic surgery there. That’s how nice it is,” Kelley said.
In this village, visiting a doctor or buying medicine costs the equivalent of a nickel, said Kelley, but “the patients I see can’t afford that.” They receive free care, however, because Kelley and his team donate their services and an Atlanta-based charity called Childspring International covers other costs.
Sometimes correcting a limp or a facial abnormality can fix many other problems. Christina Porter, program director of Childspring, said in some Third World countries, children with cleft palates and other birth defects can be shunned and barred from school. When the problem is resolved, “they have a life, they have hope again.”
Childspring sends doctors to 41 countries, but is perhaps best known for bringing Baby Noor from Baghdad to Georgia for spinal cord surgery in 2008. Such efforts save lives, but doctors can work more effectively if they go where the patients are. Though logistics and the lack of facilities precluded a trip to Haiti, Boehm found another community that needed her help.
Working through the Palestine group, she and Adam traveled to Beirut last summer, where they spent two weeks performing about 20 reconstructive surgeries on burn victims ages 5 to 21. The relief organization paid for hospital costs while she and Adam donated their time. “I came back with an improved perspective on what we are lucky enough to have here,” Boehm said.
One of the largest organizations providing charitable medical care is Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF. Its doctors typically spend much longer in areas of need, usually from nine to 12 months. Though they are paid a starting stipend of $1,400 a month for their work, that figure is much smaller than the salary of the average first-year resident. The organization sent about 5,000 international staff into the field last year, mostly to countries disrupted by civil war or natural disaster.
Sedra will need more operations before she is grown and will probably remain in Atlanta until mid-April for follow-up visits. Her progress has been good, Boehm said. But all doctors who have traveled to impoverished parts of the world realize they can’t help everyone and there are many patients who will go untreated, just as there are few who will be lucky enough to fly to Atlanta, eat at Chick-fil-A and receive the care of a Buckhead physician.
“She’s one girl,” said Boehm. “There are hundreds of thousands like her.”
Yet Boehm and Kelley agree that those who miss out on such missions are missing a chance to “recharge their batteries.”
Kelley quoted novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who once said, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.’” Said Kelley, “When God invites you to dance, you should accept.”
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