Malindi residents benefit from free surgeries by US doctors

Malindi residents are relieved after 23 surgeons from the United States started conducting free surgeries on patients with neck tumours that are complex and expensive to treat.

The annual surgical camp is organised by Caris Foundation, a Kenyan NGO that is working to alleviate poverty in Kilifi together with Tawfiq Hospital.

The camp aims at treating patients who have suffered from tumours on their heads and necks that could not be treated by local doctors.

The camp has also brought together 25 Kenyan surgeons from Nairobi and Malindi including medical lecturers who will learn how to conduct complex surgeries and teach other medical students.

Since the camp began over a decade ago, more than 5,000 patients with neck tumours and other ailments have benefitted.

This year the doctors target 70 people during their two-week medical camp.

Malindi MP Amina Mnyazi toured the Tawfiq hospital in Malindi to witness the ongoing surgeries.

She thanked Caris Foundation, the USA, Kenyan doctors, and the Tawfiq hospital for coming up with the initiative.

“These surgeons have come to do the surgeries and our doctors are also learning,” she said.

Mnyazi called on students who want to study oncology to do so saying she will give them scholarships.

The MP said the awareness has helped end the belief that such complicated ailments are a result of witchcraft.

She said there will also be a cancer awareness campaign for people to be screened. 

Prof James Netterville from Vanderbilt University in USA said they attend to patients with very huge head and neck tumours some of which are cancerous and hard to treat in Kenya.

Netterville who has been in the country over 30 times to do the surgeries said they work with Tawfiq hospital which provides the theatres and space for the patients together with Caris Foundation.

He said in the team they have senior professors including some from Havard, Indiana, and Vanderbilt among other states to teach the Kenyan lectures how to conduct such surgeries.

As experts, he said they would have conducted more surgeries very fast but they slow down the process such that in two weeks they can do 70 major operations so that the Kenyan surgeons can take part.

They target children and the elderly with rare tumours in the head and neck, saying this year most of the cases were complex such as an 11-month-old child who had a tumour on the side of the head.

“We have just treated a woman from Nairobi whose windpipe collapsed and depended on a tracheotomy tube and we took out a large portion of her windpipe and put it back together. Her tracheotomy tube is out and she can take care of her four children without having her breathing through her neck,” he said.

Jim Repart from the Caris Foundation said their organisation has been in Kenya since 2008.

He said the surgical camp became very important in 2009 when Netterville became available together with other general surgeons.

“We concentrated on head and neck because that was a specific need in Kenya to empower Kenyan doctors by teaching them and raising the level in ENT care,” he said.

Since 2009 he said they have done more than 2,000 complex surgeries at the Tawfiq hospital.

Tawfiq hospital CEO Ahmed Aboud said over 300 patients were screened.

Aboud said such camps are important in reducing the cases which are rampant in Malindi and Kilifi.

“Am happy with the cooperation that we have with the county government and the political leaders as they will help us reach out to more patients in the grassroots to get treatment,” he said.

Edited by Kiilu Damaris