Medical Mission to Kenya 2008

Medical Mission to Kenya - September 2008

In September 2008, the Elizabethtown Rotary Club sponsored one of our own members, Dr. Joseph Rebman, to join in a mission to provide eye and vision care to children in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.  The article below is from the www.rotary.org.

 During a massive Rotary club-sponsored medical mission in September, a team of 70 volunteers from 11 countries provided preventive health care to more than 10,000 children in the poorest communities of Nairobi, Kenya.

The medical team, including health care professionals and nonmedical volunteers, screened patients to determine their most urgent needs before sending them to specialty stations set up to provide dental care, eye care, nutrition counseling, and treatment of infections.

"I'm blessed to have had the opportunity to be a part of this mission and share my skills and knowledge in a way that may improve the lives of the children," says Joseph Rebman, an optometrist from the Rotary Club of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, USA. "In the midst of such astonishing poverty, the children were generous in their smiles and waves."

The medical mission, the 10th of its kind and the first in Kenya, focused on the health needs of children living in the slums of Mukuru, Mathare, and Korogocho outside Nairobi, where the poverty rate is high and preventive medical care is lacking.

The international team was hosted by the Rotary Club of Nairobi North, many of them members of Rotarians for Fighting AIDS, a Rotarian Action Group. The RFFA was one of several mobilizing partners, along with Hope Worldwide, AmericaShare (the charitable arm of Micato Safaris), and the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation.