Dr. Martin Olsen teaches a doctor in Iraqi Kurdistan how to use a laparoscope during a recent visit to the region. (Contributed / Dr. Martin Olsen)
Posted on 06/04/2007 4:14:48 AM PDT by don-o
Since Dr. Martin Olsen’s last visit to Iraq in 2004, the general mood in Iraqi Kurdistan has changed.
“Last time, there was a higher sense of optimism for the future,” he said. “Now there is more of a resignation, but there is also tenacity. They are resigned to the fact that there’s a certain extent that they’re on their own and they have to do what they have to do themselves, so they’re less likely to ask for help.”
Olsen, the head of the obstetrics and gynecology department at East Tennessee State University’s James H. Quillen College of Medicine, spent a week in Iraq this April with Dr. Randall Williams, an OB/GYN from Raleigh, N.C. The trip was sponsored by the Medical Alliance for Iraq.
“We had three things we wanted to accomplish: We wanted to put on a continuing medical education conference, we wanted to bring laparoscopy to the maternity hospital and we wanted to start an OB/GYN specialty society,” Olsen said.
Olsen hopes the physician society will be able to serve as a political advocate for the Iraqi medical system.
“Politicians pay more attention to a group of physicians that say, ‘We need this for our patients,’ as opposed to one doctor here and one doctor there,” he said.
The laparoscopy training Olsen and Williams offered allowed the Iraqi doctors to employ equipment that had been in their hospital for years but that they were unable to use.
“Somebody gave them the equipment, but they never gave them the expertise to teach them how to use it,” Olsen said. “They needed somebody on the ground to actually do a procedure with them. They have reasonable surgical skill, and once we showed them how to use the equipment and how to make the proper incisions, they actually did a case without us before we left.”
The equipment had probably been delivered during the oil for food era in the late 1990s, Olsen said.
“It’s easier to send equipment than it is to actually send someone to teach you how to use it,” he said.
The Iraqi doctors were eager to learn.
“It was like children at Christmas,” Olsen said. “They were literally jumping up and down with excitement at the chance to do something new. That was very rewarding.”
Training is hard to come by for many Iraqi doctors, especially those in the northern regions. Olsen’s personal impression of the political climate in Iraq was one of deep divisions.
“It’s very obvious to me that the Kurds have no intention whatsoever of being part of a united Iraq, and that filters down to the medical system,” he said. “It actually filters to the visa level. To send somebody out of Iraqi Kurdistan to America for training, they’ve got to get a visa in Baghdad, and if the Sunnis don’t like the Kurds and the Sunnis are giving the visas, they don’t give visas to the Kurds because they don’t like them.”
Because the doctors in Iraqi Kurdistan have limited access to training, their medical knowledge is sometimes spotty.
“They have very good knowledge in some areas and then in the next area, they may have knowledge that’s less than our third-year medical students,” Olsen said. “If they’ve gone to a conference on pediatric infectious diseases, they may know that very well, but they may know nothing about pediatric cardiac disease. In my case, there was very good knowledge by some in polycystic ovarian disease but very poor knowledge in precocious puberty. Somewhere they went to a conference or something on that topic, and they learned it really well, but the other topic was never taught, so they never learned it.”
That’s why Olsen felt that his greatest accomplishment during this visit was organizing the continuing medical education conference. He believes important medical knowledge is available in Iraq, but the doctors with the know-how need a platform to share it and a little encouragement to step up and take the lead in education. Half of the lectures at the CME conference were led by local doctors.
“The lecture that I enjoyed the most was by a local expert who discussed chemical weapons and their residual effects on the Kurdish population, specifically when Saddam used chemical weapons on about 280 sites in the late ’80s, and now they have increased birth defects and molar gestations and infertility thought to be in those areas — perhaps the residual effects from the food supply,” Olsen said.
As for the general mood of Iraqi medical leaders, Olsen hopes that his visit made a good impression.
“They’ve been promised so much and delivered so little for so long,” he said. “For example, the conference agenda was not set until the day before the conference. There was a part of me that thought, ‘Were you afraid I wasn’t really going to come? Have you been disappointed so many times that you didn’t want to set the agenda until you actually laid eyes on me?’ I wonder whether that was the case, because they have been disappointed so many times by promises that weren’t kept.”
Olsen and his colleague were treated “like rock stars” by the people they met in Iraq. The American medical system is well respected there, he said, and American physicians tend to draw large crowds.
“Just having (Americans) show up and say, ‘We care about you,’ does a lot for their self esteem,” he said. “They took away the new information, and hopefully they took away the chance that they can make a difference as a part of their new medical society.”
Dr. Martin Olsen teaches a doctor in Iraqi Kurdistan how to use a laparoscope during a recent visit to the region. (Contributed / Dr. Martin Olsen)
Last night the dems were spewing about our nation’s lacking the moral authority to lead the world. Thankfully, normal Americans do not buy into that crap.
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