No fear of Africa medical missions

BANJUL, THE GAMBIA -- When Lawrence Czer opened his drawer in the "hotel" in Kenema, three field mice scampered out and hid in the corners of the room. It was just one year after a Lassa virus outbreak in Sierra Leone and the city was strictly off limits according to travel advisories.

The culprit for the deadly virus that causes your brain to hemorrhage? Field mice were the carriers.

It would have been enough to spook anybody and send him home on the next bus and plane. But this is Lighthouse Medical Missions, no place for the weak at heart. And Dr. Czer, a Santa Monica resident and adventurer with a heart of compassion, had come to cure patients, not run away. So he saw the mission to completion.

Not only that, but Dr. Czer -- a cardiologist in charge of Cedars Sinai's heart transplantation program -- rarely misses any of the twice-yearly missions to West Africa. He's been on 16 or 17 clinics and currently came to this river-based nation to stage a clinic starting Monday with a team of some 20 volunteers.

"There are dangers," Dr. Czer said. "There are physical dangers, infectious dangers, political instability dangers. But despite these, we still come. God calls us. We're trusting God for our protection."

In addition to trusting God, Lighthouse medical teams make full use of science. On the Kenema trip, Dr. Czer advised everyone to keep objects, luggage and clothes off the floor to not get contaminated by the mice and not allow the mice to climb up onto the beds.

"We chased as many of them out of our rooms as possible. Mice run away from people, so if we could keep them out of our clothes and beds, I knew we'd be okay." No one got sick on the Kenema trip.

Now Dr. Czer is The Gambia, a nation that looks like a tongue, completely surrounded by Senegal, which looks on the map like a misshapen Pac Man. The region has the most malignant form of malaria (plasmodium falciparum), Dr. Czer said.

Just days before the clinic was scheduled, at a mere 200 miles away in Guinea, the Ebola virus resurfaced. The most deadly virus, it has claimed dozens of lives and has world health officials scrambling to contain it and tame it.

So it's not the vaunted lion, king of the jungle, stalking and jeopardizing our lives. It is the lowly mosquito, carrier of over 100 potentially fatal diseases, that is the greatest threat. Team members are constantly reminded to take their anti-malaria meds and spray on DEET, to sleep inside mosquito netting, to close doors and to use electric fans, which prevent the mosquito from landing on your skin.

I've interviewed team members asking about fear and have not hit upon much yet. I myself had fear. The first time I came to Africa (to preach in churches, not on a medical mission), I was so afraid of mosquitoes that I could hardly sleep. I wanted anti-aircraft machine guns to defend myself against the imagined aerial assault.

(The pastor I stayed with caught in a plastic grocery bag spiders as big as your hand to release them in his tree at home to feast on the mosquitoes. I learned to not fear spiders on that trip (even though he creeped me out by keeping in the loosely tied bag in the same car I was riding in.))

This time, my fear level has been lowered by experience.

The 45-member team is 75% female. There's a 68-year-old and a 13-year-old. Half the team leaves for Guinea Bissau on Monday. I'm with the half staying in The Gambia.

Team members have gotten sick but nothing serious. One young lady caught a flu, but with doctors on hand, was treated immediately and took five different medications. This did not deter from coming again to Africa. She's on this trip.

Public health concerns are no reason for kids to stay away. To the contrary, Dr. Czer advocates their participation. All eight of his children except the youngest two have come, and one of them, Christa, 25, is on this trip.

"It's very good for children to come and be exposed to Third World poverty and see the health issues and lack of infrastructure," he said. In America, "we take for granted the electricity, the clean water, the public health, but these problems are a daily reality here."

On one trip to Sierra Leone, one patient had wrapped his wound in dirty cloths simply because they had no water to wash bandages to redress it. I was told, nurses cleaned it and gave him fresh bandages, but without water to continue to replace the bandages, that patient would probably die.

It is grim work in these clinics. Because the health issues are larger than a temporary relief, Lighthouse Medical Missions has also gotten involved in water projects, founding schools and aiding basic infrastructure in these nations. Lighthouse Medical Missions is a Christian organization, but you can designate donations specifically for medicines or water projects or the like.

This is entry #5 of my chronicles of an African medical mission. To ready entry #6, click here.

Or to start with entry #1, go here.