In March 2018, a team from the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem travelled to Mekelle in northern Ethiopia to carry out complex spinal surgery on young patients, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported.
The mission
According to JTA, eight doctors, two nurses and a physiotherapist took part in the weeklong mission. It was led by the spinal surgeon Dr Josh Schroeder and Dr Allon Moses of Hadassah. The team performed five surgeries at Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Mekelle, which did not have a spinal surgeon, JTA said.
The patients
The patients, all aged 18 or under, had severe spinal deformities that caused life threatening complications, including pressure on internal organs and lung infections, Schroeder told JTA. Some operations lasted eight hours. “The problem with pediatric cases is that if you do not treat them on time, they get worse,” he said, according to JTA.
Training and partnership
Besides operating, the Israeli team trained Ayder staff, and the medical device company Medtronic donated the equipment needed for the surgery, JTA reported. Hadassah and Ayder have a partnership under which Israeli medical students serve in Mekelle and Ayder’s doctors receive training and supplies from Hadassah, according to the report.
A longer relationship
Hadassah’s own account of the mission, published on 20 March 2018, gives more background. It says Hadassah has had ties for about a decade with Mekelle University, which includes schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and public health, and that four Hadassah medical students do a rotation in Mekelle every year. Physicians and nurses from Mekelle also took part in a Hadassah “Train the Trainer” programme to combat HIV and AIDS, according to the account.
Hadassah describes Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital as serving some 8 million people across northern Ethiopia. Some patients travelled from farming villages hundreds of miles away with no phone or electricity. Hadassah also states that this was the first time scoliosis surgery had been successfully completed in Ethiopia; that is the organisation’s own claim and has not been independently confirmed.
