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Africa hospital beckons as vacation destination

ARTISTIC VISITS: Pat Wittmann of Hilbert shows some of the art from Africa she has collected as a medical volunteer. (Rick Evans photo)

By Joanne Flemming
Compass Correspondent

Like many other people, Pat Wittmann of Hilbert likes to travel during her summer vacation. Unlike them, she doesn't sightsee or relax at the beach. Instead, she works as an operating room technician just as she does every day at Calumet Medical Center in Chilton. The only difference is she does it at an 800-bed hospital in East Africa.

Wittmann, a member of St. Mary Parish, Hilbert, accompanied Dr. Joseph Pilon, an orthopedic surgeon from Sherwood, on a six-week trip to Bugando Medical Center in Mwanza, Tanzania.

While there, she organized the operating room where Dr. Pilon, a member of St. John-Sacred Heart Parish, Sherwood, performed more than 100 surgeries.

Wittman has made a dozen trips with Dr. Pilon - about half to Africa and the rest to the Amazon region in Brazil.

Wittmann said Dr. Pilon went to the Amazon at the request of a missionary priest he met at Marquette University in Milwaukee. That priest is also a doctor who ran an immunization program.

When he decided to build a small clinic on a boat the Navy gave him near the city of Santarem, he asked Dr. Pilon to come to perform surgeries. Wittmann, who knows Pilon through her job in Chilton, joined him after he had made several trips to Brazil.

She and Pilon went every two years and stayed three weeks. She said people went to the priest's clinic because they can't afford to go to the hospitals in town. The surgical teams who volunteered there repaired "a lot of club feet and fractures."

Later, the priest built a free-standing clinic which is out of business. In 1998, when their services were no longer needed in Brazil, Pilon and Wittmann volunteered to go to Africa through Health Volunteers Overseas, a non-denominational organization based in Washington, D.C. A Sheboygan doctor, also a friend of Pilon, recruited them to work at Bugando Medical Center.

Months of preparation precede each trip, Wittmann said. First, he does fund-raising by speaking to groups about their experiences. She contacts companies in the Fox Valley and elsewhere for donations of medical supplies and equipment.

Although Bugando Medical Center, run by the Maryknolls, a Catholic missionary order, has a medical and nursing staff, "they don't have a darn thing to work with," she said.

So she asks companies for whatever "they have sitting around. Things we throw away or think nothing about here, they (the Africa hospital) don't ever dream of having. Nine times out of ten (the companies) give me better than I asked for and more. It's amazing how generous people are."

This year she and Pilon had 18 huge duffel bags full of sterile supplies when they left Wisconsin in late June. But the airlines only allowed each of them to take three. Pilon persuaded four of his children to come with them for a few days and to bring the remaining 12 bags.

Travel time took nearly a week. The group flew to London, where they laid over 10-14 hours before flying to Nairobi, and a 90-minute flight to Mwanza.

That city on the shores of Lake Victoria is about 4,000 feet above sea level and is more like a small town, Wittmann said. While the weather was hot, there was no humidity.

The hospital serves a region of around 8 million people. Volunteer medical personnel live a half-mile away in a five-bedroom house.

Wittmann said she spent most of her time in Africa working in the operating room. Pilon saw patients on the wards, where there sometimes were two patients to a bed - one with his head at the top of the bed; the other, with it at the foot.

Monday through Friday her day started early. She disinfected the room before each surgery, brought in the sterilized instruments, then scrubbed herself and put on a sterile and gloves. After the operation, she "wiped down" the operating room again and brought in the next set of instruments.

Pilon's patients had club feet - an "abnormality in which the front part of the foot turns toward the inside of the heel" - and fractured hips, legs and elbows.

AIDS is a big problem, Pilon said. "People come in with tuberculosis.... If they have tuberculosis, we have to assume they have AIDS."

Wittmann spent weekend mornings getting instruments organized for upcoming surgeries.

She and Pilon said their greatest problems came from unreliable electrical power - even the backup generator didn't always work.

When power was off, the sterilizers didn't work, Wittmann said. Even if instruments had been sterilized, she couldn't remove them because the doors wouldn't open.

Pilon said they got around that problem this year because his son-in-law bought them three sets of instruments so "one set was sterile all the time. We were able to keep the surgery schedule going."

A few surgeries were done by flashlight. "You're taking a small child's foot apart and trying to get the tendons all in one place. You're doing it by flashlight. It's a thrill, one you've never experienced before, but we were able to do it and do it well," said Pilon.

Hospital employees only work eight-hour days. When that time was up, they went home, Wittmann said. Sometimes medical staff provided incentives to get them to work overtime or come in for a couple hours on a Saturday.

She and the supervisor worked late each night in the operating room, often leaving somewhere between 9 and 10:30 p.m.

"Pat worked herself sick," said Pilon. "She was just damn near goofy by the time we left, she was working so hard. She was dehydrated."

Wittmann said on weekends she took naps and walks with friends. She also drew strength from frequent visits to the hospital chapel.

"It was a nice calm way to start the morning and ask for a little help from someone up there who I really need a little help from," she said.

She also tried to get an early seat at Sunday Mass. The people really got into the singing in Swahili. "It was uplifting. I think about it as 'a joyful noise unto the Lord' when I hear it. It was just tremendous."

When an African doctor training to take over orthopedics got sick, Pilon ended up staying a sixth week to look after his patients until the other doctor was well and another volunteer surgeon arrived. Pilon and Wittman returned to Wisconsin in early September and plan to go back to Africa in 2004.

When asked why they kept going to Africa, Pilon replied, "We serve the Lord." He added that this was his family's motto.

"It's hard, hard work," said Wittmann, but something just pulls me back. I couldn't do it just once. Once I started, it was something I looked forward to. If I had the money and things to take, I'd go and live out there."

Pilon said he feels discouraged when he returns home because they are walking away from so much that needs to be done. "I always have to go back," he concluded.