Lake County >> Each year, Worldwide Healing Hands sends a team of doctors and nurses to a developing country to provide much needed health care. These places often lack the necessary medical equipment and personnel to keep their citizens completely healthy. That’s where OB/GYN Dr. Paula Dhanda, M.D., the leader for these trips, and her committed and highly trained medical team come in. In 2014, Dhanda received an Unsung Hero Award from the Dalai Lama for her work with her organization.
Dhanda and her team recently returned from a one-week mission trip to Haiti, where their main focus was cervical cancer prevention. The group included general surgeon Scott Welker, M.D., who addressed breast cancer cases on the mission, anesthesiologist H. Vernetta Johnson, M.D., Christine Hansom, R.N., Carol Stahr, LVN and Jacklin Sime, a fifth year medical student in Haiti, who worked with Dhanda on a previous mission.
“Cervical cancer is the number one or number two killer in these low resource countries,” said Dhanda, explaining that these areas don’t have access to the tests that screen for the cancer. “What we’re seeing in Haiti, their cervical cancer and the breast cancer, it seems to occur at a much younger age than we’re seeing in this country. What happens sometimes, these mothers will survive child birth and they’ll die of breast cancer or cervical cancer.”
Furthermore, according to GlobalGiving.org, Haiti has the highest cervical cancer incident rate in the world, with 94 of every 100,000 women being diagnosed. That the illness is easily detected and treated is what makes Dhanda’s work so important. “No one should die of cervical cancer,” she said. “It’s a preventable disease.”
Dhanda’s first mission trip was to Chad, Africa in 2009. “I was invited by a surgeon who said the need for maternal health was enormous in this area of Africa,” she said. “One mother dies every two minutes due to complications of childbirth. When a mother dies her children are 10 times more likely to die in the next two years. It affects the family. It affects the whole community when the mother dies.” Thankfully, Dhanda and many other medical professionals have provided some relief for this pressing issue. “I think the maternal mortality has gone down significantly,” she said.
Dhanda and her team tackle medical issues in an area based on the specific problems the region faces. “We assess what their needs are and then we try and focus on whatever their issue is,” she said. “So they invite us to come and we’ll address the needs. Sometimes we’ll train midwives and sometimes we’ll do the cervical cancer prevention and sometimes we’ll do both.”
And since the majority of these places don’t have adequate medical supplies, the group has to transport their own equipment around the area. “When we go on theses missions we carry our medical supplies with us, we take everything that we need,” she said, explaining that during their most recent trip they lugged around 10 suitcases weighing 50 pounds each. “We carried almost 500 pounds of medical supplies with us. And most of those supplies are donated by local hospitals and organizations that we work with.”
While they complete their mission trips once a year, their assistance is relied upon regularly. “Our training is ongoing throughout the year,” Dhanda said. “We’re available to consult with them and teach them on an ongoing basis.”
On the recent trip to Haiti their plan was two-fold: first to screen for cervical cancer and treat it if needed and second, to train medical professionals living in Haiti, so that the country will have some resources to help treat and prevent this illness in the future. “[Women] come in. We do an exam and we put a little vinegar on their cervix,” Dhanda explained. “And if we see a precancerous or a cancerous lesion we remove it right there. It’s really effective in lowering the incidents of cervical cancer.”
The medical training also proved to be successful. “It was awesome, what we did on this trip was we trained OB/GYNs and two nurses in this procedure,” said Dhanda. “They’re all Haitian staff, local staff. They were excellent surgeons. They were really eager to learn.”
Dhanda and her colleagues hope to create a positive impact on the future of medical care in Haiti. “By training the local staff it’s very sustainable,” Dhanda said. “They will become trainers for us, so they’ll train other Haitians. So it’s easy for us to go in and do 25 or 30 surgeries but it’s a lot better if we train the locals on doing that because they can do countless surgeries.”
Local donors and organizations provided the funds and supplies needed to make this and all other trips a success. “Our organization is completely dependent on donors and private donations to carry on our work,” said Dhanda. “And the people of Lake County have been very generous in supporting us.”
It should be noted that the Lake County community also reaps the benefits of Dhanda’s work. “In addition to doing this global work we do work locally,” she said. “This last Thanksgiving we had a medical screening for the homeless people in Clearlake. I think that’s important to say because a lot of people say, ‘Well, that are you doing for the local people?’” On top of running the Specialty Care and Surgery Center in Kelseyville, Dhanda has also been serving the community at a clinic in Clearlake for the last 24 years.
Though she performs an abundance of work for her patients in Lake County, Dhanda feels compelled to help on an international level. “I think that we have so much to give,” she said. “I only take doctors who are experienced and who can teach. We lend our knowledge and our skills to help them to improve.”
Of course, she and her team are rewarded for their generosity. “And as much as we give, I feel like we get so much in return, as far as it being fulfilling and really being able to make a difference in the world,” she said. “Every doctor that goes on these missions comes back really fulfilled and feels like they accomplished a lot.”
While only a select few have the expertise to embark on these kinds of trips, everyone can play a part in helping to combat pressing medical issues. “For 10 dollars you can screen one woman for cervical cancer,” said Dahnda. “I think for very little money somebody can make a difference. Because not everybody can go to these places and work. It’s really challenging to go there. It’s probably the hardest work that we do as medical personnel.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
