By MELISSA BEAL Palisadian-Post Contributor In Myanmar, a 4-year-old orphan boy suffered for more than two years with a prolapsed bowel through an ostomy site. In simple terms, his intestines were protruding from a hole in his stomach. Only $250 was necessary to surgically repair the child’s organ, but his orphanage could not afford it. This boy was one of more than a thousand patients treated in and around Yangon and Pathein during a medical mission trip to Myanmar, led by Palisadians Dr. Marna Geisler, a pediatrician, and Dr. Terri Rock, a family physician who specializes in travel medicine. They worked in conjunction with The Myanmar Compassion Project, a non-profit organization in Rangoon. They were accompanied by a nurse and a nurse practitioner, plus Geisler’s husband, William Bierschenk, two of their children, Kate, 17, and Garrett, 16 and Rock’s 23-month-old daughter, Melanie. Thousands of children in Myanmar have no access to medical care, a result of drastic reductions in healthcare spending under a military regime. The nation spends less than $1 per person per year on health-care and the World Health Organization has ranked Myanmar’s health care system as the second worst in the world. Last July, Myanmar’s top general, Than Shwe, spent more money on his daughter’s wedding than was budgeted for health care for one year. ‘It’s worth the whole trip to have one human who won’t suffer for the rest of his life,’ said Rock, who recently received a photo of the little boy, now healthy, whose prolapsed bowel was fixed as a direct result of their trip in December. Geisler, who has been working on medical mission projects for 18 years, and Rock, who has more than 30 years of mission experience, met on a mission trip to Honduras several years ago. Still, Myanmar proved to be their most rewarding project. ‘It has never been as rewarding or gratifying as this trip, because no one had ever gone on a medical mission, and no one is going back,’ Rock said, alluding to aid restrictions in the Southeast Asian country. Geisler chose Myanmar for a medical mission trip after visiting the country with her husband in 2005. They were impressed with the beautiful ancient pagodas and other tourist spots in the former Burma, but were appalled by the poverty and disease they saw as they rode their bikes off the beaten path through local villages. Many of the local children had lice and scabies and, according to some locals, AIDS, malaria and snakebites were the three leading causes of death. Myanmar’s military government has placed serious restrictions on humanitarian groups, making it difficult for anyone to provide aid to Burmese people in crisis. Even the Red Cross was forced to leave the country, for administering AIDS tests. As a result of such stringent rules, Geisler and Rock’s team had to move to different locations every day in order to avoid government officials who might have attempted to blackmail or threaten them for providing medical care to those in need. Although the team had acquired permits to practice medicine in some villages, the government kept a close watch on them throughout their trip. To prevent any activity considered illegal by officials, a government ‘minder’ stayed at Geisler’s exam table at all times. Although he could not speak English, he could ensure that the Burmese translator was discussing nothing more than medicine with the mission team. ‘He was actually quite bored, so we put him to work,’ Geisler said. ‘We taught him how to take blood pressures and how to do urine dip sticks. It was funny, our big, bad overseer, doing urine sticks because he was bored.’ They also received a great deal of help from their guide, Zinmar, who was orphaned at an early age and raised in Pathein. She worked at the hotel where the team stayed. Geisler met Zinmar last July when she went to meet with local medical personnel to set up the December trip. Zinmar helped them set up various clinics and put Geisler and Rock in contact with area hospitals. Their team was unable to secure access to any hospitals, but with Zinmar’s connections they were able to send patients with serious health problems to those facilities that were better equipped than their outdoor clinics to deal with surgical matters. Geisler and Rock’s team paid for several surgeries, including the boy with the prolapsed bowel, with some donations, but mostly by underwriting them themselves. They also used their own money to pay for travel expenses, medication and government bribes. ‘It’s amazing how little it costs to help these people,’ Geisler said. However, medical expenses for so many people gets costly. The team also purchased medication, at reduced prices, from India and China. Although the Burmese people were familiar with most medications, they could never afford them. A doctor’s examination, however, was something most of the Burmese, especially the children, were unfamiliar with. ‘Most of them were scared. They didn’t know what a doctor was,’ Rock said. ‘We had on white coats but they didn’t know what that meant. They’ve never had a shot or any doctor experience.’ Every patient was given a medical exam and then sent to the expedient pharmacy staffed by Geisler’s children, Garrett and Kate, for a three-month supply of vitamins, analgesics and any other necessary medication, before visiting Geisler’s husband Bill, acting as Santa Claus, for a new toy. One little girl they examined was particularly frightened. Unsure what the doctors were doing to her or the other children, she hesitated to climb up on the examination table. Her big brother, quickly came to her assistance, slapping her in the face as if to say, ‘Get over it.’ Geisler and Rock laughed at the young boy’s methods, but then, no longer afraid, the little girl climbed up on the table for her examination. For her struggle, she received vitamins and a new toy. At another orphanage, Geisler examined a village boy who had heard about their clinic and walked an hour and a half to see the doctors. ‘He was basically healthy and couldn’t come up with a reason to see a doctor so he listened to everyone ahead of him in line,’ Geisler said. ‘He came to me with an entire litany of complaints, from headaches to chest pain to asthma to cough to diarrhea to arthritis to high blood pressure’everything the people ahead of him in line had complained about.’ The little boy was given a clean bill of health, vitamins, a toy and new shirt. To him, it was completely worth his arduous walk. On Geisler and Rock’s first day, their last patient was an area policeman. He waited in line with everyone else and was diagnosed and treated. He made no threats to shut them down, nor did he attempt to blackmail them. On their last day, however, they were not so lucky. At sundown, at an outdoor clinic outside Zinmar’s childhood home, the military caught up with them. ‘They obviously knew we were there all day and waited until we saw everyone who needed help,’ Geisler said. ‘But we were threatened with jail time if we did not shutdown immediately.’ Due to nightfall and a lack of electricity, the team was already in the process of closing their outdoor clinic. Nevertheless, they were forced to pay the fine for illegally providing medical care. Neither Geisler nor Rock know exactly how much the fine was because their translator, who was in charge of monetary issues within the country, paid the officials and refused to disclose the amount, advising the doctors not to worry about it. However, they do know that the amount was pretty substantial, at least enough to purchase the pig that fed the village later that evening. Still, it was completely worth avoiding a stint in a Burmese prison. Earlier in the day, Rock and Geisler had treated the children of the same military officials who had threatened them. The next day the officials met them for breakfast at their hotel to escort them immediately out of town. Before Geisler and Rock left Myanmar, they gave Zinmar a digital camera, so when she had an opportunity to use the Internet, she could send e-mail updates and photographs of the villagers they had helped during their visit. ‘We can get so burned out here at our offices,’ Geisler said. ‘It’s so nice to go to other countries where you can do what you can with what you have and people are thankful for it.’
