Walter Wilson Nana
Buea, Cameroon
For 21 years, Dr Georges Bwelle watched his ill father slip in and out of consciousness, travelling to hospitals that were not equipped to help him. Jamef Bwelle, Dr Georges Bwelle’s dad, was injured in a 1981 car accident near Yaoundé, Cameroon’s political capital. He suffered only a broken arm at first, but an infection developed and spread to his brain, creating a hematoma that would affect him for the rest of his life.
“There were no neurosurgeons in Cameroon,” Georges Bwelle told CNN Africa, adding that “We would have taken him out of Cameroon if we had the money.”
Dr Georges Bwelle (in green theatre ware) doing what he knows how to best - surgical operations
Instead, Dr Bwelle spent years escorting his father to overcrowded clinics and hospitals, getting whatever treatment they could get.
“It’s not easy,” Bwelle mentioned. “You can leave home at 5 a.m., running to the hospital to be the first, and you are not the first. There (are) a lot of patients. Some people can die because they are waiting.”
However, the situation has not changed much since Dr Bwelle’s father died in 2002.
In Cameroon, there is only one doctor for every 5,000 people, according to WHO. For comparison’s sake, the ratio in the United States is one doctor for every 413 people.
And even if they could see a physician, many Cameroonians could not afford it. Two out of five people in the country live below the poverty line, and nearly three-quarters of the country’s health-care spending is private. “The only problem they have is poverty,” Dr Bwelle said in an interview with Cameroon Radio & Television, CRTV. “And with poverty, they cannot enjoy their life,” he added.
Seeing his father and so many of his countrymen suffer, Dr Bwelle was determined to do something about it.
He became a doctor himself, working as a vascular surgeon in Yaounde’s Central Hospital. And he started a nonprofit initiative christened, ASCOVIME, that travels into rural areas on weekends to provide free medical care. Since 2008, he and his group of volunteers have helped nearly 32,000 people.
Almost every Friday, he and up to 30 people jam into vans, tie medical supplies to the roofs and travel across rough terrain to visit villages in need.
According to a CNN Africa report, their luck does not always hold out. In some cases, they will have to push their vehicles through rivers and mud more than once. But when they arrive, they receive a true heroes’ welcome; a feast, singing and dancing, and the best accommodations the community can offer.
In these villages, free medical care is truly a cause for celebration, and Dr Bwelle, with his big smile and boundless energy is more than happy to join in the fun.
The next morning, the team begins meeting with hundreds of patients. “We are receiving 500 people in each trip,” Bwelle said on CRTV-Television monitored in Yaoundé. He will quickly add; “They are coming from 60 kilometers around the village, and they’re coming on foot.”
Each of these weekend clinics provides a variety of medical care. Many people are treated for malaria, tuberculosis, malnutrition, diabetes, parasites and sexually transmitted diseases. Others might receive crutches, a pair of donated eyeglasses or free birth certificates – documentation that is required for school but that many impoverished families simply cannot afford.
In the evenings, the team will do simple surgeries with local anesthesia. Operations are usually done in a schoolhouse, town hall or home; after the procedure, patients get up and walk to the recovery area to make way for the next person.
With the group’s generator lighting the operating room and sanitising equipment, Dr Bwelle and his volunteers work into the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a backbreaking pace, but village musicians usually help keep the team motivated. “They are beating drums all the night to (keep us) awake and continue our work,” Bwelle told CNN Africa.
On Sunday, the team heads back to the city, tired but proud of their work. The group; a mix of Cameroonian doctors and foreign medical students, has performed 700 free surgeries in the past year, and they know that their help can make a world of difference to those they help.
A beneficiary conceded that the free hernia surgery he had received will allow him to work again. “This will change my future with my family,” the man said.
In addition to holding these weekend clinics and working as a hospital surgeon, Dr Bwelle also works nights at private medical clinics around Yaoundé. “It is this second job,” he said on CRTV Television, that funds about 60 percent of his nonprofit activities; the rest is covered by private donations.
“I’m not sure when he sleeps,” said Katie O’Malley, a second-year medical student from Drexel University in Philadelphia and volunteer with Dr Bwelle’s group. “He is always either at the hospital or trying to make money for the organization so he can go on these campaigns.”
For medical and nursing students such as O’Malley, who come from the United States and Europe to join Dr Bwelle on his missions, it’s a hands-on opportunity they had never got at home. “We’ve been able to scrub in on surgeries where we help blot blood away or hold tools for Dr. Bwelle,” O’Malley said. “That’s not something you would ever get to do in America as a second-year medical student,” she mentioned.
The student volunteers usually pay their own way to Cameroon, often arriving with donated medical supplies. But once they arrive in Yaoundé, their board, transportation and instruction are covered by Dr Bwelle. “He’s a hero, without a doubt,” O’Malley said in an interview with CRTV Television. “He gives his life to this organization, and his desire to help the Cameroon people is everlasting.”
For Dr Bwelle, the near-constant workload is not suffering. Helping others live happier lives, fulfilling a promise he made to his father, is something that brings him great joy. “I am so happy when I am doing this work,” Dr Bwelle said on CRTV Television, while adding “And I think about my father. I hope he sees what I am doing.”
This Cameroonian medic is amongst the top 10 CNN Heroes for 2013. TO Vote for him, please follow this link http://heroes.cnn.com/
Voting for the 2013 CNN Hero continues until Sunday, November 17 2013, while the CNN Hero of the year – 2013, will be revealed, Sunday, December 1 during “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute.”
