| Tracy
to revisit Bangladesh
Dennis Tracy, a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist at St. Mary’s Hospital and Clinics is scheduled to go to Bangladesh  the
middle of February for 2 weeks where he will be working with a surgical
team to provide anesthesia for surgical procedures. Two surgical
teams sponsored by Project Bangladesh, a non-profit organization based
in Newport News, Virginia plan to perform 100 surgeries. This is Tracy’s
second trip with this group; his first was back in January of 2008.
“The majority of the procedures will be hysterectomies on women with a high risk of infection,” said Tracy. “The women we help are from the slums of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Most of them have had multiple pregnancies and births. It is not uncommon for some women to start having babies at age 12 and by age 30 to have had 10 or more pregnancies. These frequent pregnancies along with traumatic or precipitous delivery can cause the uterus to prolapse, or to be outside of the vagina. This is a very poor and uneducated country; many families cannot afford to care for their children so many of the young girls are given up. Dennis will be part of two surgical teams, each consisting of an OB-GYN surgeon, a general surgeon, registered nurses, scrub techs, sterilizations specialist, and two other anesthesia providers. “The hospitals we serve have surgical conditions and equipment that are something like we had in the United States back in the 1950s and 60s. Although, their sterile techniques are similar, their standard of care is very different from ours,” said Tracy. “The hospitals we go to do not have the ability to sterilize equipment like we do; they are only able to boil water and use the ‘tincture of time’, it is a very primitive situation. Most of the medication we use, we have to take with us; however we are able to purchase some items there, but not very many.” St. Mary’s Hospital is donating some medications, gloves, masks, etc. plus allowing Dennis to borrow a pulse oximeter; which he found to be invaluable on his last trip there. If you would like to make a tax deductible donation please issue a check to Project Bangladesh and give to Dennis and he will take it with him when he goes to Bangladesh. Or you may donate directly to Dennis to help defer the cost of this trip which will run approximately $2500; however those donations are not tax deductible. If you have further questions concerning donating please contact Dennis at 983-0589.  |
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