Mbingo Baptist Hospital gets new ambulance

The western African nation of Cameroon is home to Mbingo Baptist Hospital, where doctors perform thousands of major and minor surgeries every year. That makes it every bit as busy as the St. Luke's University Health Network campus in Fountain Hill, but the resemblance pretty well ends there.

For one thing, St. Luke's has air conditioning. Mbingo Baptist, which began life as a leprosy treatment center, does not, apart from window units in the six operating rooms. Elsewhere, there are only windows to relieve the equatorial heat.

More shocking to Western sensibilities, perhaps, is that some of the people seeking treatment at the 300-bed hospital — even seriously ill ones — spend a day or two walking or hitchhiking to reach it.

That's because most people in the region are too poor to afford cars or motorbikes, and Mbingo Baptist has no ambulance.

Happily, it will have one soon. St. Luke's — which has partnered with Mbingo for a couple of years through the St. Luke's International Surgical Studies Program — is donating one.

"Every time that I'm there, we have critically injured or ill patients that need a CAT scan," said Dr. Richard P. Sharpe, the program director, who takes fourth-year surgery residents to Cameroon three times a year to observe and assist at the hospital. "They have to send these patients to another hospital 45 minutes away."

During Sharpe's last visit, in April, a patient with a spinal cord injury needed a scan before a surgeon could operate.

"They put him in the back of a pickup truck and drove him there," Sharpe said. "That's how they transport them, or they tell them they're on their own and have to take a taxi or bus."

The ambulance — a decommissioned 2002 model from the St. Luke's fleet — "fills a critical need for them," he said. "To us it's junk. We're just going to scrap it. To them, it's gold."

The surgical studies program began in 2014 with the aim of helping hospitals in developing nations. Sharpe said he chose Cameroon because it has a stable government and has escaped outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as Ebola, that have affected other nations in the region.

The hospital, one of six in the nation operated by Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services, isn't easy to get to. It takes two days to reach the airport in the coastal city of Douala. Then, it's a seven-hour drive into the mountains.

Sharpe said Mbingo resembles American hospitals of a half-century ago, with its big, open wards. But as modest as the facilities are, it is one of the top three hospitals in the country, with nearly 600 employees. It has general and orthopedic surgeons, an HIV/AIDS treatment center, and ophthalmology and dental services.

So far, seven residents and four attending physicians have made the month-long visit, helping, teaching and learning.

The ambulance has been serviced, cleaned and covered with Mbingo decals. Sharpe said he isn't sure when it will be shipped, but it ought to be there well before the next St. Luke's team visits, in September.

Sharpe said the experience is remarkable.

The population "has nothing, but are absolutely the happiest patient population I've ever had," he said. "They are so thankful you are there to take care of them, or at least see them."