A short one to say thank you for the adjustable hospital beds. It was so providential that you gave them to us only a couple of days before the Christian Blind Mission team came out and did cataract surgery on 27 eyes.

Just a short one to say thank you for the adjustable hospital beds. It was so providential that you gave them to us only a couple of days before the Christian Blind Mission team came out and did cataract surgery on 27 eyes. I was allowed to stand in observing the operations on the first day as the surgeon from Michigan USA went right inside the eye and hooked out the cataract damaged lens and replaced it with a Perspex synthetic one. Truly amazingly skilful and courageous work. For the first few eyes the surgeon struggled with the beds adjusting attachments located on the end of each bed which we had two set up end to end so he could go smoothly from one patient to another as they lay head to head. We turned the beds end for end and butted them together again, this time without any restrictive bed parts to impede the surgeons movements. The surgeon was extremely happy with this set up and proceeded to smoothly operate on eye after eye. Pretty to watch.

The eye team used all four beds. One to lay the patient on to anaesthetise their eye and they were then transferred to the bed vacated by the last patient as the surgeon was operating on the person next to them. The other bed was used to lay out all their gear which was replenished and transferred to the next patient up for surgery.

The whole operation would have been so much more difficult without the beds and the eye team said this rural outreach was the best set up they had ever had. The six of them stayed at our house the four days and we had a good time in the evenings playing chess and drinking good PNG coffee and putting the world to rights.

Tomorrow I will be driving into Goroka to pick up our two Aussie friends, a married couple we knew in Caloundra the eight years we were there. They will stay two weeks and hopefully be able to send you some of the photos I took of your beds in operation (so to speak).

Thanks

LAST year the Rotary Club of Lae delivered a wheel chair to the Bundi Camp on the outskirts of the city.

The wheel chair was a donation to an old lady from the Gembogl area of the Chimbu Province.

Eta Nimambo was released from the Angau Memorial Hospital after a long battle with tuberculosis of the spinal cord.

It was a disease that eventually paralysed her even though she was cured.

Back at her home at the Bundi Camp she could not walk. All her movements meant being carried around by relatives.

It was not until elders from her Holy Spirit Parish at Boundary Road put a request to the Rotary Club of Lae for Eta Nimambo who is popularly known as ‘Mama’ that help eventually arrived – much to the tears of joy of her relatives.

Now mobile she was able to wheel herself from her settlement home to the church on Sunday where Lae Rotarian Oseah Philemon found her and took this picture.

Mrs Nimambo said she was very happy with her wheel chair. She is seen here with her relatives outside the Holy Spirit Parish Church.

The Rotary Club of Lae has donated wheel chairs to people all over Lae as well as others of Papua New Guinean whenever requests had been received.

Closing ceremony today, underway tomorrow! It seems like we just got here.

PEARL HARBOR (NNS) — U.S. Pacific Fleet’s humanitarian assistance mission, known as Pacific Partnership, is preparing to set sail on a five-month deployment for Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua-New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and the Federated States of Micronesia on March 21, 2011. Now in its sixth year, Pacific Partnership 2011 is aimed at strengthening regional relationships with Southeast Asian and Oceania nations that might be called upon to respond to natural or humanitarian disasters in the region. Pacific Partnership is designed to enhance these relationships through medical, dental and engineering projects, as well as subject matter expert exchanges (SMEEs). “Since the 2004 Tsunami that caused profound suffering in several South East Asian countries, we have learned that by working together we are better prepared to overcome the considerable challenges caused by natural disasters,” said U.S. Navy Capt. Jesse Wilson, Pacific Partnership 2011 Mission Commander, and Commander of Destroyer Squadron Twenty Three. The amphibious transport dock ship USS Cleveland (LPD-7) is the lead U.S. vessel. Ships from Australia, Japan, and New Zealand, and a helicopter crew from France, will join the USS Cleveland during different phases of the mission. Canada, Singapore, and Spain will also deploy teams to support the mission. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will embark on the USS Cleveland to partner with its multinational crew to provide medical, dental, veterinary, and engineering services to local communities identified by host nations. In addition to medical and engineering infrastructure projects, partner nations and NGOs will work with their host nation counterparts on developing sustainability projects and SMEEs on a range of topics, including methods of recycling, clean water practices, and alternative energy initiatives. “Our goal is to build sustainable partnerships and projects that will strengthen alliances while working to prevent or mitigate humanitarian disasters,” said Capt. Wilson.” Over the past five years, Pacific Partnership has provided medical, dental, educational, and preventive medicine services to more than 300,000 patients in 13 countries. More than 130 engineering projects in more than a dozen countries have included school refurbishment and construction of entirely new clinics for providing essential medical services to remote villages and communities. For more news from Pacific Partnership, visit:
www.cpf.navy.mil/pp11
http://pacificpartnership.wordpress.com
www.facebook/pacificpartnership/
http://twitter.com/pacificpartner

By BOLA NOHO

BECKEY Yamanea is a 19 year-old Grade 11 student at the Wabag Secondary School in Enga province. She is a promising young Engan lass and was in full swing in her studies but fell sick while at her school early this year.

The student was referred to Mambisanda Hospital but was later referred to the Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) in March. According to her doctors the initial clinical symptoms indicated that Ms Yamanea was suffering from leukaemia – cancer of the blood cells. A bone-marrow biopsy, an examination conducted for leukaemia, a nasty disease in which the bone-marrow produces too many white blood cells was ruled out. But she was diagnosed as having aplastic anaemia, unlike leukaemia is a blood disorder in which the bone-marrow doesn’t make enough new blood cells.

In other words Ms Yamanea’s bone-marrow stem cells were damaged and unable to produce enough new blood cells. This is a serious and life threatening illness and there is no treatment for such disease available for cure except bone-marrow transplantation, replacing the diseased bone-marrow with new bone-marrow cells from a donor in PNG hospitals.

Ms Yamanea is currently undergoing multiple blood transfusions which are not the cure but supportive treatment to relieve signs and symptoms by providing blood cells to her bone-marrow which her body is unable to produce. The teenager’s only hope of cure is to have bone-marrow transplantation. This can only be conducted in overseas hospitals and is a costly exercise.

She has a long way to live but this can only be achieved through successful bone-marrow transplantation. However, her family are unable to meet her medical fees and other costs required abroad for this operation. She is therefore appealing to those Good Samaritans out there to help her with financial assistance so that her hope to live can be made possible and realized.

Any contributions can be deposited directly into Andrew Yamanea T/F Beckey Yamanea’s Account number: 10002213096 at Bank South Pacific (BSP) Waigani Branch or pledges for financial assistance can call Andrew Yamanea on telephone number: 3259051/ Bmobile 76938332, Digicel 71002900,Mark Ipu on Bmobile 76880391 or Luke Kulimbao on Bmobile76858841.