Why Tenwek?

(Click Photo to Enlarge)

The connection that Vanderbilt University has to Tenwek Hospital is Dr. Mike (left) and Dr. Russ (right). Dr. Mike is an echo cardiologist at Vanderbilt University's Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital and Dr. Russ is the Chief Surgeon at Tenwek Hospital. Mike and Russ were medical school classmates who kept in touch over the years. While Russ had a need and desire to start a cardiac surgery program at Tenwek Hospital, Mike was working in an established cardiac surgery program at an academic institution that shared the common goals and visions of bringing cardiac surgery to the premier Missions Hospital in the Rift Valley Province of Western Kenya and the 600,000 Kenyans that hospital cares for.

During the summer of 2008, Dr. Mike approached me and several other clinicians at Vanderbilt University to see what interest we all had in travelling to Kenya to do the first open heart procedure at Tenwek Hospital. Of course, I immediately told him I was in without knowing anything about cardiac surgery or missions work in foreign countries, let alone a 3rd world country. Little did I know that this trip would be a life-changing event not only for our future patients in this remote location in Kenya, but for our cardiac team as well.

Tenwek Hospital's statement of Faith is "We Treat, Jesus Heals" as seen on the sign outside the hospital. The events that I will be writing about during our first trip to Tenwek Hospital from November 5th through November 16th, 2008 cover every emotion. My hope is to document the hopelessness and the hopefullness of these Africans as well as their strong faith in the Lord. I hope you will be as energized and inspired by reading these stories as I was by living them.

The baby in the collage above was one of the success stories of our trip. She was born shortly after our team arrived at Tenwek Hospital, and suffered meconium aspiration during delivery. Had our ICU team not been present the week that we were there, that baby would most likely not have survived. In the photo above, the child was in the final stages of recovery thanks to the ingenuity of Dr. Marek and Dr. Barr and the round-the-clock care of our awesome ICU nurses Mary Beth, Diedre and Rebecca (who is pacifying the infant in the photo) whom you'll all meet in future posts.

Just as Christianity is the center of Tenwek's missions statement, the hospital church (see upper right photo above) is in the center of the hospital compound. The baseball cap that Dr. Russ is wearing bears the logo of the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. Watch in future posts to see where that hat ends up...