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August 2008 Thank You Letter

Dear Friends,

Jill has been our only full-time expatriate medical staffer for over four years. She works in Bethel, Alaska, every summer, while national staff keep the program running in her absence.

Short-term volunteers from Europe and the USA join Jill in Fangak, offering expertise and sweat, - and often blood. They leave with appreciation for the disproportionate impact their efforts can make in a land of tremendous need. Where would we be without them?

Sjoukje giving blood

Frank Schumann, a urologist from Seattle, operating. Physician assistant (and wife) Heather Pullen assists, while Liech serves as circulator and illuminator.

Marga Goris spends her annual holidays in Sudan improving our lab diagnostics - as she has for years

Sjoukje de Wit returned from Sudan to Holland in 2004 to care for her mother. She manages logistics for the TB program (along with lambs and cows) from her family farm in Holland. She returns to Sudan one month each year now, and will help Jill sort out the new level of chaos this fall.

Sjoukje weighs and measure kids,
assessing their nutritional status.

While we were absent this summer, the local authorities “ired” COSV, the Italian organization responsible for primary health and tuberculosis in Old Fangak. Jill was an unpaid consultant. COSV is the bigger player, and the oficial recipient of international funding for health care. They left Fangak early in 2006 due to security concerns, and have attempted to manage their program from afar. That did not go well - and there were other problems as well. To shorten a long story, the local people now expect us to ind an NGO to replace COSV.

High ethics / low cost groups begging to relocate to rural Sudan are not easy to ind. We are still searching.

Since Jill came to Sudan in 1989, and Sjoukje in 1992, we have seen many non-proits at work. Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers) was Jill and Sjoukje’s irst sponsor, and has been a steady ally. We collaborate with the World Health Organization, World Food Program, Tearfund, Christian Medical Aid, Carter Center—and too many groups to mention. Alas, none are looking to take on another site.

Nurse Lori Gibbons and friends.

We do have cause for hope. The government of South Sudan has said they will offer inancial incentives to primary health workers, such as our national staff, next year. We’ll see. The Global Fund to ight AIDS, TB and Malaria is active in South Sudan, and may offer monetary support for our TB work. While we igure that our low budget keeps us lean, mean and cost effective, a few crumbs from the global funding pie for staff salaries wouldn’t hurt.

Lori Gibbons and Jack Hickel, a nurse and family doctor from Alaska, were two short-term volunteers in Fangak last year Dr. Hickel has many years of experience doing medical-missionary work in sub-Saharan Africa. He was so impressed with Jill’s work that he wanted to help. He envisioned building a new clinic–hospital to replace our crumbling, bat-ridden colonial hospital – which is only on temporary loan from the local government, which needs it back. Displaying amazing and dynamic organizational and fundraising skills, Jack, Lori, and friends have organized the Alaska Sudan Medical Project, speciically to promote health-related infrastructure in Fangak. This will be a big boon to our efforts in Fangak.

These Nuer ladies found both Dr.
Jack Hickel and his camera
most appealing

Jack and Lori plan to return to Fangak in November 2008,
accompanied by an Alaskan team of well drillers, carpenters, engineers, plus solar panels, a satellite dish (that should save us thousands on phone bills), regionally-sourced building materials — and a film crew to document it all! Can you imagine the local reaction? You can learn more about their plans at their impressive website: www.alaskasudan.org

Traditional local transport:
a dugout canoe on the river

Oil brings both hope and conflict to
Sudan. Who knows where this oil
company barge passing Old Fangak,
is going.