Wednesday, June 30, 2004

X-ray fund for hospital in Ethiopia grows slowly

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By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

Friends and former colleagues at St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center are a lot closer to purchasing a portable X-ray machine for radiological technician Ryan Schmidt and his work among the poorest of poor in Ethiopia.

So far, according to Yvonne Parrish, of St. Luke’s surgery scheduling, some $4,800 has been collected toward the $12,000 SourceRay SR-130 machine, a 150-pound, four-and-a-half-foot high X-ray machine on wheels that uses digital technology for X-rays rather than wet chemical developing.

Among major gifts, an anonymous local donor wrote a check for $1,000, a garage sale yielded $1,500 and friends in Schmidt’s hometown of Casper, Wyo., held a car wash.

Schmidt, 26, widely known in the Wood River Valley as a competitive runner, is in Gimbie, Ethiopia, a village where medical care ranges from nonexistent to primitive.

He went there under the auspices of Adventist Health International, which operates 20 hospitals and health care outposts in Africa, India and the South Pacific.

In e-mails to former St. Luke’s colleagues, Schmidt describes almost uncivilized conditions in which he and other volunteer medical personnel are treating Ethiopians.

One of his earliest experiences was with a newborn infant found abandoned by local police. The baby, Schmidt wrote his valley friends, was cold and covered with dirt before Schmidt and others cleaned it.

He also has encountered children and their parents whom he described as having "the blank stare of zero hope in ... life." He also was called on to assist a volunteer doctor in treating an aged women lying almost comatose in her bed, covered with body waste, one foot partially eaten away by infection and flies.

The difficulty of health care delivery in Ethiopia, Schmidt pointed out, can be explained by the shortage of trained personnel in a country of 70 million, where life expectancy is 43 years for males, 45 years for females.

"It took a few hours (after arriving) to mentally get over how graphic and sick this world can be to mankind," Schmidt wrote.

Donors to the X-ray project can call St. Luke’s surgical nurse Hazel Thorne at 788-5635 for information.

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