Lynne Boulter and Donna McKendry will leave for Vietnam on Sunday to deliver medical equipment and a ‘Hippocampe’ to Pieng Ve village. Picture: Stewart Chambers.
By Nicole Williams
FOUR Vietnamese children will be smiling ear to ear when three local nurses arrive in their poor and remote village this weekend.
Three nurses from St John of God Berwick Hospital will leave on Sunday for a six-day self-funded trip to donate a Hippocampe wheelchair to Ha Thi Thao, a young girl with cerebral palsy, and a walking frame and calipers for a boy with rickets (weakening of the bones) in Pieng Ve village.
Donna McKendry, Lynne Boulter and Fiona Jackson will also take the children, as well as two young boys, one with a genetic skin condition from Agent Orange and another with collapsed ankles, to a larger hospital for assessment and treatment by doctors.
Ms Boulter said Ha Thi cannot walk.
“Her family carry her 1.5 kilometres to the local village school and back again,” she said.
“This impacts greatly on her parents’ daily life and their ability to work.”
Ms McKendry said it will be the third healthcare mission for St John of God since 2009 but this trip was more personal.
“It’s inspiring. You think ‘why would you bother, it such a long way away’ but having gone back the second time, you can see the difference it is making to their lives,” she said.
“Like this little girl with cerebral palsy who will be able to be pushed to school now.
“Think of the difference that will make for her mother – you can carry a child but you can’t carry an 18-year-old.”
St John of God held a fundraising ball for the trip and raised $8000 for the equipment to take to Vietnam, but the nurses have self-funded the trip and are sacrificing their annual leave.
As well as the medical equipment for the four children, Ms McKendry, Ms Boulter and Ms Jackson will take equipment for the medical clinic, like mops and buckets.
It will build on infection control training provided during the last two visits.
“We’re trying to give the nurses the basic needs so they can do their job,” Ms McKendry said.
“They have had the training but they just don’t have the resources.”
The group will also speak to the local schools, which the projects have assisted in previous trips, to see what the next project may be.
“We will see what they and the nurses need us to do next,” she said.
“We are really just trying to set up a project that we go into once a year and help them with some support.”
The first healthcare mission was in 2009 where the group worked as labourers to improve the local medical clinic and teach some back hand hygiene.
In March 2012 a second group travelled back to teach dental hygiene, supply 3000 toothbrushes to the villages and donate school play equipment.
