Surgeons to Return to Gambia
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced it will provide support for Estonian surgeons to take part in a humanitarian mission to Gambia this fall.
The mission, similar to one last year and administered by a British volunteer association, has a three-pronged approach: operating on those in need of surgery, training local surgeons and promoting good health among the population.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Paet said the last mission was successful, prompting the Gambian Health Care Ministry to put in a new request for a team to be sent to a hospital in the Farafen region to help.
"We decided to accede to Gambia's request and three medicine experts with past experience participating on the mission will go to Gambia already this year," said Paet on July 6.
As in the case of the last mission, Estonian surgeons will focus on treating patients with hernias. Paet said that the availability of medical care in many African countries is extremely low, mentioning that only three percent of the world's medics work on that continent despite the large population.
Operation Hernia Humanitarian Mission is a UK-based volunteer organization that has been carrying out surgical missions around the world since 2005, including Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Mongolia and Ecuador. The missions are generally one or two weeks in length; the surgeons use surgical instruments from their homeland and work on a volunteer basis without remuneration during their vacations.
Kristopher Rikken