Rotary Program: 8/27/03

Program Chairperson: Carrie Cinnamond

Program Speaker: Dr. Gan Maddiwar

Dr. Gan Maddiwar is a retired surgeon who practiced medicine in the Martin County community for 30 + years. He is also a veteran of the first Gulf War and retired from service as a colonel in 1990. He and his wife, Sharika, make their home in Banner, Ky. and have one daughter, a pediatrician in Cincinnati, Ohio and two sons, both engineers, one who lives in California and the other in New Jersey.

Since Dr. Gan last spoke to our club, he has been on four medical expeditions, the latest of which was held in Honduras, Central America. The team is a part of RAM/Rotary, a group of medical volunteers that travel all over the world to provide no-cost health care to native populations in their own villages and towns. Sometimes, as was in this latest trip, the team makes the journey into the mountains and rural villages to provide medical procedures and surgical operations when it is impossible to get the people into the hospitals in larger cities. There, the team saw as many as 800 patients per day and performed 7 general surgeries, mostly pediatric hernia repairs. Dr Gan said that the greatest problem was the fact that none of the team spoke Spanish and none of the patients spoke English, so almost all communications were done by hand signals.

According to the statistical sheet that was passed among the club membership, Dr. Gan and the RAM Team went to India in January and performed 38 minor and major surgeries. Then, in July, a joint effort between Rotary and UVA went to Comayagua and saw 4,965 patients out of which 7 general surgeries were performed. In late July, a joint venture between the Lions Club and Rotary Club of Wise, Va. held a Health Fest at the Wise County Fairgrounds in which there were 900 volunteers with 50 dental chairs, a mammogram van, endoscopy van, and a lab for eye glasses. Of the 4,749 patients seen, there were 2,681 teeth extractions, 93 mammograms, 1,140 eye exams (840 obtained prescription glasses made in the RAM mobile eyeglass lab), and 2,067 had general medical consultations. A similar joint venture of the two clubs was held in Grundy, Va. this past weekend, but so few volunteers showed up that many patients had to be turned away and final numbers of those treated were not available for today’s presentation.

Dr. Gan ended his talk by encouraging the membership to get on the website to view the pictures taken on the expeditions. That address is RAMUSA.org. Thanks, Dr. Gan and keep up the good work. – J. Morgan Chapman