I traveled to Cameroon, a country on the Atlantic coast of Africa, this past May and June on a medical aid mission. Upon my return, others have kept spreading the word of Ascovime, Dr. Georges Bwelle’s grassroots medical organization and have also continued donating. NPR did a segment of “The Story” with Dick Gordon about Dr. Bwelle and Ascovime which helped bring in donations from all over the United States. Along with many substantial monetary donations, others have expressed great interest in volunteering and donating medical supplies.
School and Medical Supplies
Global Links and MediFree have been generous enough to send two boxes worth of sutures (over 200), gauze, catheters, spinal needles, iodine swabs, as well as school supplies for African children. This was all facilitated by the work of another small organization called Sutures Are A Human Right. Please be sure to check these sites out and support. Thanks again to Global Links, MediFree, and Sutures Are A Human Right!
Big banking in the UK received a lump of coal from jolly old Cambridge University this Christmas. The banking trade association in the UK wrote to Cambridge U asking them to censor an academic thesis of one of their students because it exposed one of their security flaws. Instead of jumping at fixing the flaw they simply try to cover it up. Click on the crest to check out the article:
Check out some cool pictures from a blizzard here near Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Approximately 14″ (35 cm) of snow and up to 70 mph (112 kph) which has currently shut down Logan airport and also has caused a snow day for many businesses in the area!
My Honda
Wind plastering the side of a neighboring building
Hi everyone, it’s been a while since I posted something. I’ve just caught wind of an NPR story about Dr. Bwelle! Dick Gordon of North Carolina Public Radio hosts a show called The Story and will be doing a piece on Dr. Georges Bwelle. It should air in Vermont on Monday 10/18/2010 at 2pm. Check it out here: http://thestory.org/
Updated 10/18 – The Story is out:
The Story producer Anita “Bekang” Woodley was in Cameroon this past summer, with a tape recorder, looking for her own ancestral village when she happened upon the doctor by chance. Today, we’ll hear Anita’s story of returning to her village, and Dr. Georges’ story of bringing health care to rural Africans.
Blog posts from my trip to Cameroon, where I was lucky enough to join with Dr. Georges, are here. By the way, he can always use your help. Here’s how donations that we raised before my trip in the spring 2010 were used.
Thanks for coming in!
The Story producer Anita “Bekang” Woodley was in Cameroon this past summer, with a tape recorder, looking for her own ancestral village when she happened upon the doctor by chance. Today, we’ll hear Anita’s story of returning to her village, and Dr. Georges’ story of bringing health care to rural Africans.
The goal of this study was to develop an in vivo awake mouse model for extracellular bladder sensory nerve recording. A bipolar 125-µm silver electrode was positioned under a single postganglionic bladder nerve. Efferent nerve signals were eliminated by tying off the postganglionic bladder nerve between the major pelvic ganglion and the recording electrode. Sensory nerve activity was measured in the conscious animals 48 hours after surgery during continuous intravesical infusion of 0.9% saline/0.5% acetic acid followed by 0.5% acetic acid with capsazepine (10 µM) at a rate of 0.75 ml/h. Continuous infusion of 0.9% NaCl led to a gradual increase in the frequency of sensory nerve firing that peaked upon reaching threshold pressure. Non-micturition contractions were observed in some animals during filling and other animals exhibited only minimal pressure fluctuations; both types of events were associated with a rise in sensory nerve activity. Intravesical infusion of 0.5% acetic acid reduced the intermicturition interval. This was associated with a 2.1-fold increase in bladder pressure during filling and a 2-fold increase at both threshold and micturition pressures. Concurrent with these changes, sensory activity increased 2.8-fold during filling and 2.4-fold at threshold pressure. Subsequent intravesical infusion of capsazepine in 0.5% acetic acid reduced filling and threshold pressures by 21% and 31.2%, respectively, and produced corresponding decreases of 36% and 23.4% in sensory nerve activity. The current study shows that multi-fiber sensory nerve recordings can be reproducibly obtained from conscious mice.
Enjoy this great little tune made by some students at Middlebury College and a fledgling producer flown in from LA. Clever little commentary on what college kids do at school, the brotherhood of lacrosse, and then below is a classic small-town, politically correct report from the local news. Both are worth a chuckle.
Compelling newscast: (Embedding was disabled) on how the lacrosse players feelings were hurt.
The annual whiffle ball tournament at Little Fenway and Little Wrigley in Essex, VT finished this weekend and no one really cares who won the tournament. They raised over $300,000 for the Travis Roy Foundation to fund spinal cord research as well as help the injured make their lives easier by buying them special wheelchairs and the like. I believe this was the ninth tournament since Pat O’Connor built the field in his backyard, and cumulatively they’ve already raised over $1 million. Impressive! Find out more about the tournament here.
Under the headline “UVM graduate discovers career in rural Africa” the Burlington Free Press printed nice follow-up article about my trip to Cameroon.
He recently returned from an intense four weeks in the African nation of Cameroon helping surgeon Georges Bwelle minister to those unable to afford medical care.
Bwelle’s base is Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, but every weekend during the dry season he and a team of volunteers head into the poorer, rural sections of the country to set up free temporary clinics. None of the volunteers are paid for their efforts, and Bwelle doesn’t have the money to recruit help. He relies on word of mouth and the generosity of others.
Quick update: I safely touched down in the U.S. after a 24 hour journey from Cameroon. The flights all went smoothly and I’m back home in Vermont. I didn’t have internet for a week so I’ll be posting more stories of my experiences in the next couple days so stay tuned!
If you’re a lady you’re probably already thinking, whoa there buster, take it easy. And if you’re a man, you’re probably thinking this is going to be interesting…
During my medical mission in Cameroon, I have learned a great deal about the cultural differences between the Western world and Africa. However, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. It seems like they’re worlds away from an economic standpoint, but when it comes to inter-spousal relations, they’re right in our ballpark.
Exhibit A: our friend Philippe came to the hospital on our surgery day, when Dr. Georges and I typically don’t see patients. However, the back story of his plight was just too much for us not to stay a little late and fix him up.
The annual whiffle ball tournament at Little Fenway and Little Wrigley in Essex, VT finished this weekend and no one really cares who won the tournament. They raised over $300,000 for the Travis Roy Foundation to fund spinal cord research as well as help the injured make their lives easier by buying them special wheelchairs and the like. I believe this was the ninth tournament since Pat O’Connor built the field in his backyard, and cumulatively they’ve already raised over $1 million. Impressive! Find out more about the tournament 
