The SingHealth relief programme has 90 volunteers on standby for relief organisations to tap on during humanitarian crises

By Ng Jing Yng

An increasing number of Singapore medical professionals are answering the call to lend a helping hand to those afflicted by disasters or in need of health-care services in other parts of the world. 
 

The popular image of a medical doctor is someone in a white coat and tie, or in hospital-issued attire – helping the sick or saving lives – then going home at the end of the day.

There is another image: The doctor prepared to step out of his or her “comfort zone” to embark on a humanitarian mission abroad.

More Singapore doctors are in fact answering this call – to go forth where there is a great need, such as helping disaster victims in some remote place overseas.

Increasingly too, Singapore healthcare groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are providing the logistical backup for such missions by doctors and other health-care volunteers.

The Singapore International Foundation (SIF), for instance, began its first medical mission in 1991 to the Philippines under the flagship Singapore Volunteers Overseas programme.

From November 1991 to September 1992, three rotating teams of dentists and nurses were sent to the Philippines to provide dental services in the aftermath of the Mount Pinatubo eruption.

In July this year, local healthcare group SingHealth started its SingHealth Humanitarian Relief Programme to create a ready pool of healthcare volunteers for relief organisations to tap on during humanitarian crises.

The partners for this initiative are Mercy Relief and the Singapore Red Cross Society.

SingHealth volunteers have in fact worked with these two NGOs in relief efforts during disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and last year’s flash floods in Yemen.

SingHealth’s programme currently has 90 volunteer doctors, nurses and allied health professionals.

This pool is essential as the number of medical relief missions has gone up since the big tsunami in 2004, said Dr Mark Leong, who heads this new programme. He is also the head and senior consultant at Singapore General Hospital’s department of emergency medicine.

“This form of meaningful giving aims to serve communities afflicted by disasters,” he said.

Singapore medical volunteers have also gone on missions to Pakistan in 2005 after the earthquake and to Myanmar a year ago, after cyclone Nargis struck.

These doctors usually take time off their normal work schedules to participate in longer term missions. However, some of their employers also give them time off.

Those who go on such trips on their own initiative do so over the weekend or use their leave.

Dr Leong, noting that Singapore is fortunate not to be in a natural disaster-prone area, said there is a need for its skilled professionals to lend a helping hand elsewhere.

Volunteers are also mindful, when going on such relief missions, that they do not displace the local health-care personnel, he said.

When visiting foreign teams help, it is important that the local community must not become reliant on them. They are served mainly by their usual healthcare providers once the situation becomes more stable, Dr Leong added.

Hence, Singapore medical team members who go abroad on such relief work are very conscious that once reconstruction work begins, their role becomes supportive, not primary.

Acute relief missions thus provide the “golden hour of trauma care”.

The other services that the medical volunteers render involve long-term and recurring short-team trips that seek to offer consistent medical care to less developed communities elsewhere.

For instance, after the SIF has identified an overseas community for a project, a specialist team of doctors will make frequent trips during the project’s duration to help train and build up the skills and knowledge of their counterparts.

The Singapore Red Cross Society sends medical teams for post-disaster reconstruction work – that is, the second phase after the initial emergency work – to look into the provision of hospitals and other medical facilities.

Close collaboration with the local medical teams helps them sustain and provide long-term healthcare for their people.

Meanwhile, some Singapore doctors, on their own initiative, have made trips to, say, nearby places like Batam.

They might render specialist treatment or provide routine medical check-ups for the local people. DrJoseph Thambiah, the division head of orthopaedic trauma at National University Hospital, is one. He makes monthly trips to Batam to provide medical services for its people.

Such rising interest among Singapore health-care workers heartens Dr Leong.

“It about going back to the basics as a doctor – to save lives – and that is what really matters,” he said.

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War against Malnourishment

General surgeon Wong Ting Huay vividly recalled her experiences in war-torn Angola in 2002.

She was 29 then, and a volunteer doctor with the international group, Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders.

Dr Wong, now 36, spent almost seven months in Angola working at a feeding centre for severely malnourished children and adults. There, working in tents which served as makeshift clinics, she attended to people who came for medical advice.

One day, she saw a trail of yellow grain on the dust road outside the ration centre.

It was the monthly ration day of the World Food Programme (the food aid branch of the United Nations which provides food for the starving).

The needy would queue there for bags of maize on these days.

Following the trail, she saw that it came from a small hole in the food ration bag of a woman walking ahead of her.

The woman had her child on her back while precariously balancing the bag on her head. She did not realise that the maize was flowing out of a hole.

When the centre’s staff alerted her to this, she put down her child and the bag  and began scooping up the lost grains, trying her best to separate the grains from the dust so she could take home as much as possible.

However, her efforts were futile and she had to give up after a while.

This was one of many similar incidents that touched Dr Wong. She also saw  many despondent mothers at the food ration centre, crying when the rations had run out, desperately hoping that somehow there would be leftovers.

She now works at the Singapore General Hospital’s department of surgery. She is part of SingHealth’s Humanitarian Relief Programme  which has a ready pool of medical workers that humanitarian organisations can tap on during a crisis. When the need arises, she still volunteers with Médecins Sans Frontières.

Dr Wong, who is engaged to be married, said these medical relief missions are not without their dangers.

Drawing from her experience in Angola, she described the scene on food rationing days.

Hundreds would descend on the centre and the situation would be so chaotic that she and her colleagues would  have to avoid driving on the roads that led to the distribution site.

Besides the alarmingly huge crowd of women and children queuing anxiously for their monthly food supplies, there would also be thugs present.

The latter would look for a chance to rob the centre or they would wait for a chance to snatch rations from the women and children.