DeWitt providers travel to Africa to give humanitarian care

FORT BELVOIR, Va. - A group of health care providers from DeWitt Army Community Hospital traveled to Kenya recently to treat diseases common to sub-Saharan Africa and aid the people of the impoverished country.

Non-government organizations Hope Africa Ministries, Inc., and Christ Church in Fairfax Station organized the humanitarian trip. DeWitt’s Director of Medical Services Col. John O’Brien; Chief of Pediatrics Maj. Jason Coleman; Family Medicine residents, Drs. Michael Brown and Richard Sheridan; and staff physician assistant Robert Levesque teamed with 22 dentists, teachers and other health care providers on the trip.

The team established a medical camp in the remote village of Sakwa, in southwestern Kenya, about 240 miles from the capital of Nairobi. The team purchased medical camp supplies locally and brought some from the U.S.

O’Brien said the team cared for some interesting patients, including the first patient - an 80-year-old woman who hadn’t walked in a year. 

“When we tried to get her to the closest hospital to have her broken hip repaired, her biggest concern was that someone would steal her only possession - a chicken - if she didn’t go home that night,” O’Brien said. “We promised [her] that someone would take care of it and, when we saw her later, it was the first time she had been pain-free in over a year.”

The team treated approximately 1,500 people from Sakwa and surrounding villages, including nearly 250 children from a school near the camp. The Kenyan Ministry of Health provided interpreters.

Almost all of the Kenyan children had some form of parasitic disease, due to the lack of adequate footwear. The group provided the children with medicine and distributed sandals. The team also distributed more than 100 pairs of glasses in their first 24 hours in country.

In the region, clean water and electricity are almost nonexistent and many of the children had malaria. The symptoms, O’Brien said, “seemed very different from the classic textbook descriptions from medical school.”

Other diseases health care providers saw included cases of goiter, brucellosis and polio - conditions easily preventable through immunizations and diet.