local weather Click for Sun Valley, Idaho Forecast
 front page
 classifieds
 calendar
 public meetings

 previous edition

 recreation
 subscriptions
 express jobs
 about us
 advertising info
 classifieds info
 internet info
 sun valley central
 sun valley guide
 real estate guide
 homefinder
 sv catalogs
 hemingway
Produced & Maintained by Idaho Mountain Express, Box 1013, Ketchum, ID 83340-1013 
208.726.8060 Voice
208.726.2329 Fax

Copyright © 2003 Express Publishing Inc.
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 


Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Features

Duty calls doctor overseas

For valley physician, the longest trip is ahead


By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

For a physician whose work confines him to a small community in the mountains of southcentral Idaho, Dr. Frank Batcha’s medical practice in 2004 not only has gone wildly versatile, but global as well.

Dr. Frank Batcha, of the Hailey Medical Clinic, examines a boy at a clinic in the small village of Bamboi in the African Gold Coast country of Ghana.

In April, Batcha joined a Boise physician friend and former classmate, Dr. Waj Nasser, for a 10-day working trip to the small village of Bamboi in the African Gold Coast country of Ghana to treat villagers for a variety of ailments and diseases rarely seen in modern U.S. medical facilities.

Then, come November, the globe-girdling Dr. Batcha will doff casual work attire he wears around the Hailey Medical Center and St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center to become Army Maj. Frank Batcha in camo gear and ship out for Iraq.

There, he’ll serve for one year in the Idaho National Guard’s 145th Support Battalion of the 116th Cavalry Brigade attached to the 42nd Division.

As a brigade surgeon in a forward operating area, Batcha will treat everything from simple daily sick call ailments of troops to being the initial contact physician for more seriously wounded and injured personnel who will be evacuated to a larger medical unit in a rear area.

So, in a year’s time, Batcha will have traveled farther than your average hometown doctor--some 16,000 miles roundtrip on the Ghana trip and some 14,000 miles roundtrip by the time he returns from Iraq. He also will have applied his skills to American patients, to Africans suffering diseases long ago conquered by U.S. medicine and to GIs in a combat zone fighting terrorism.

To Batcha, all this is a learning experience.

During his absence in Iraq, several physician partners in the Hailey clinic will be available for Batcha’s patients.

Since returning in April from Ghana, which he visited under the auspices of the Boise-based Small Village Foundation, Batcha has been reflecting on the dramatic contrasts between his daily medical duties in Hailey and an African village.

He and Nasser treated at least 100 persons a day, Batcha said. The common complaint was back pain.

Back pain?

Women carry jugs of water on their heads all day, he said. The weight must be at least 50 pounds. And men suffer from back pain brought on by a stooping posture while using a short-handled hoe in their farming.

"The soil is clay and hard," Batcha said. "They (the patients) explained that the short handle is necessary to get a firmer, stronger digging action, so they have to stoop."

With their arrival in the village, Batcha said "it was like a circus—people who didn’t need any help turned up."

Batcha and Nasser brought along anti-venom medication for deadly snakebites that are common in Ghana. They also treated intestinal parasites, malaria and elephantiasis.

Wood River Valley pharmacies also "were awfully generous," , Batcha said. Albertson’s, Chateau Drugs, Karen’s and The Drug Store contributed two duffle bags filled with 10,000 doses of such medications as Tylenol, ibuprofen and Amoxicillin.

Batcha said because the world is shrinking and more people travel between countries, it is important for U.S. physicians to be familiar with diseases that are endemic to places such as Africa so they can be detected and diagnosed.

"Most physicians here just aren't familiar with a lot of those conditions, and wouldn’t know" what a patient from, say, Africa was suffering if he or she showed up in a U.S. hospital emergency room.

Batcha and Nasser were housed at a Catholic mission, whose Polish priest provided a "refreshing" break from the misery seen all day at the place where the physicians treated patients "after goat dung was swept out."

The mission had its own well and a generator for limited lightning.

"There wasn’t much to do, but talk," Batcha said.

Still, Batcha said, "it wasn’t enjoyable, but absolutely enlightening."

The sponsor of the trip to Ghana, Small Village Foundation, was founded by Jeannine Smith, of Boise, with the help of her husband, Mark, a dentist. They have made a number of trips to Ghana, and enlisted Nasser, her personal physician, and Batcha as a longtime friend of Nasser.

If the current variety in Dr. Batcha’s career seems adventurous, consider:

He began his career with a degree in entomology, the study of insects, before studying to become a physician.


Homefinder

City of Ketchum

Formula Sports

Windermere

Edmark GM Superstore : Nampa, Idaho

Premier Resorts Sun Valley

High Country Property Rentals


The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.





|