Skip to main content

Home | Reports and News | R.C of Cowbridge

 

News from the Rotary Club of Cowbridge

 This year the Rotary Club of Cowbridge President, Peter Fox, has chosen the Rotary Doctor Bank of Great Britain and Ireland as his President's Charity.   The prime role of the Rotary Doctor Bank is to provide health professionals for work in remote mission hospitals and clinics, mostly in the African countries of Malawi, Uganda and Ghana.

 

Volunteers are involved in treating all the illnesses we take for granted in the UK because they are easily alleviated, treated or cured when proper medical attention is provided.  Illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure and other medical problems with lots of orthopaedic and gynaecological surgery are all made worse by the scourges of HIV/AIDS, Malaria and increasingly TB, with children easy targets for these killer diseases.  Volunteers report patient populations with as many as 35% who are HIV positive. 

 

The volunteers' work may be used to enable overworked local staff to a take a well earned rest, they may cover for other absentees, like training leave and surgeons particularly find that they may be the only specialist to visit the location during the whole year.  The alternative for patients may be a three day walk to the nearest government hospital, or they may die.  All volunteers teach local staff new skills and modern techniques to improve the care offered to patients.

 

Staffing is just as much a problem as in other parts of the world caused by death of staff members from HIV/AIDS and increasingly poaching staff (both nurses and doctors) from these poor countries to the rich western world.

 

A donation of £1500 from the Rotary Club of Cowbridge will sponsor a doctor, paying for airfare and incidental living expenses, to work in Malawi for eight weeks with some of the most deprived people in the world.