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| WISCONSIN DOCTORS, NURSES HELP AFGHANI COUNTERPARTS: TEAM AIDS KABUL HOSPITAL'S EFFORTS TO CURB HIGH MORTALITY RATES February, 2005 As Afghanistan struggles to rebuild itself after years of political turmoil, a team of Wisconsin doctors and nurses is playing a key role in advising how to lower the death rate at the country's largest women's hospital. Two doctors, three nurses and a hospital administrator from Wisconsin are in Afghanistan this week and next training health care professionals. The trip is the first phase of a three-year project that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded to the Center for International Health, based in Milwaukee. "It's a terrific opportunity to take what we know and help in an area that needs it desperately," said Mark Anderson, president of the center. The center is a consortium of health care professionals from Wisconsin charged with advancing health care education in more than 30 countries. While in Afghanistan, the team will observe and evaluate medical practices at the hospital and eventually make recommendations. Several medical teams are expected to visit the hospital in the course of three years. Others who are traveling with Anderson include Doug Laube, chairman of the obstetric and gynecological department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; James Sanders, a doctor at the Medical College of Wisconsin; Donna Harris and Chris Gall, two nurses from Children's Hospital of Wisconsin; and Mary Cummings, a nurse and the center's project coordinator. The team will examine the care at Rabia Balki Hospital in Kabul. It is Afghanistan's largest women's hospital, treating more than 36,000 patients annually and delivering approximately 40 babies a day. This assignment will prove to be especially challenging, given the local custom that bars men from touching any woman who is not his wife. Only women doctors treat women patients in Afghanistan. Also, the American women will be required to cover their heads and wear long skirts. "It'll be interesting to see how the men and women will be treated differently," Anderson said last week, a few days before his departure. Tommy G. Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor who served in President Bush's first term as health secretary, was instrumental in getting the grant for the center, Anderson said. |
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