It was only months after Bales returned from the Congo that he saw an opportunity to do some international volunteerism in the United States. A physician he knew in Northwest Indiana returned from rescue efforts in earthquake-torn Haiti and told Bales about a girl who had a severe urologic deformity.
“It’s addicting. If you get to people early enough in their training, it will become part of their lifestyle.... In an ideal world, I’d spend half my time overseas and half my time here.” — Scott Eggener, MD “I was a little emboldened by what I’d done with Scott in the Congo,” Bales admitted. He teamed up with pediatric specialist Mohan Gundeti, MD, and performed the necessary surgery in Munster, Indiana. “My radar after the Congo was up a bit. Once you get kind of hooked, you don’t always have to go to another country, but it’s an opportunity to provide care to the Third World.” Eggener, a member of the university’s Global Health Initiative, says he strongly favors standardizing and formalizing global health as part of the medical curriculum at the Pritzker School of Medicine. “I think our job as a medical center and large academic organization is to get this across people’s minds, so that those who do have an interest can jump at the opportunity.”
Giving Back to Countries of Origin For physicians who are immigrants to the United States, volunteering overseas is a way to maintain ties with their home countries. That’s how Valluvan Jeevanandam, MD, chief of cardiac and thoracic surgery, who was born in Tuticorin, India, approaches his volunteerism in South India. Each year since 1993, Jeevanandam has been traveling to Sri Sathya Sai Super Specialty Hospital, in Puttaparthi, India, to do heart surgery on the “poorest of the poor.” The hospital is completely free and is run from a trust established by the spiritual guru Sathya Sai Baba, who runs a nearby ashram. Teams from all over the world come to the hospital to do specialty surgery, including cardiac surgery and neurosurgery. The hospital has a waiting list of thousands who need heart surgery, but the hospital can only do about 1,000 cases a year, Jeevanandam said. His role is to teach and mentor staff surgeons on how to perform difficult surgeries. “As I got involved with the hospital, I got involved with Sai Baba as well, and that altered my entire thinking about how to live life,” he said. “So the experience has exposed me to the less fortunate and helped me grow spiritually while I’ve helped them with their cardiac program and training.” Jeevanandam says that because the treatment is free, a different relationship is established between physician and patient: “You’ve taken money totally out of the equation, and you’re really helping. When you do something for free and you help someone, the gratitude you see in their eyes and their attitude is just very uplifting.” Though he works 12- to 14-hour days in India and stays in a tiny room with a cot at the ashram, Jeevanandam says he feels refreshed and recharged when he returns to the Medical Center. “I’m actually energetic. It’s like a great vacation for me. I’m really happy doing it, and maybe it gives me as much pleasure or more than what I contribute over there.”
Seeing the great need in their home country is one of the reasons that Olufunmilayo “Funmi” Olopade, MD, FACP, the Walter L. Palmer Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics and associate dean for global health, and her husband, Christopher ’Sola Olopade, MD, professor of medicine and clinical director of the Global Health Initiative, have continued to practice medicine in Nigeria. Funmi Olopade has been doing research on how breast cancer is treated in Nigeria, while ’Sola Olopade has conducted asthma research and outreach campaigns to reduce indoor air pollution in rural villages. He educates “It was remarkable how the Vietnamese urologic Nigerians about the health risk surgeons were hungry of using biomass fuel for cookfor advances and ing and provides alternatives, knowledge.” including safe indoor stoves. Arieh Shalhav, MD, volunteered More than 2 million women and in the summer of 2009 to teach children die around the world and perform bladder and kideach year from indoor pollution. ney cancer surgery in Vietnam. Through their international research, the two physicians have seen the need to create a more organized approach for scholarly work in global health at the university. Both were instrumental in establishing the Global Health Initiative, which is functioning as an interdisciplinary academic home for students, trainees and faculty who are interested in developing sustain- “The gratitude you see in their eyes and their attiable solutions locally and tude is just very uplifting.” globally. (See accompanying Valluvan Jeevanandam, MD, article on page 26.) has taught and mentored “The Global Health Initiative surgeons in India for nearly exists so that we’re not just two decades. responding in 100 different ways to international emergencies,” Funmi Olopade explained. “We’re also being strategic in developing long-term partnerships that will really support global development.” Funmi Olopade frequently takes colleagues, students and researchers to Nigeria. Her discoveries about breast cancer in Africa have informed her genetic “We’re also being strategic in developing long-term oncology work at the Medical partnerships that will Center. “What I tell people on the really support global South Side is that we’re not going development.” to know anything about your anOlufunmilayo “Funmi” cestry, about your breast cancer, Olopade, MD, FACP, has until we study breast cancer in been conducting research Africa. For the longest time in on how breast cancer is this country, most of the research treated in Nigeria. focused on the majority of the population, not the minority.”
Medicine on the Midway Spring 2011
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