Physician feels calling to do medical missions
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| Dr. Chris Bratton, left, and Dr. Samuel Bada, right, perform a surgery while on a medical mission to Ghana. |
Since his initial trip in 2001, Dr. Bada, an internal medicine physician at Ultimate Health Clinic, has made the mission trip to remote villages in Ghana each year. He even has started a foundation to raise funds to underwrite the cost for the trip and medical supplies, which provide free medical treatment for village residents. For many of these villages, the free clinics the mission trips provide are the only health care the residents have in their villages all year long.
Mission team members include surgeons, internists and general physicians, as well as nurses and support personnel, such as ministers and laypersons. Many of the team members return each year, even though they are responsible for covering their own expenses. Last year, a group of nurses from West Tennessee Healthcare made the trip. Medical supplies are either donated or purchased by team members and supporting organizations.
Each fall, mission team members are gone from ten to 16 days and spend five to ten of those days offering medical care in free clinics. Team members, which include four to five physicians, eight nurses, and associated support staff work with local officials and see between 300 and 500 patients each day.
The medical teams set up primarily in four tiny villages in Ghana – Kadjebi, Anum, Peki and Hohoe, but see patients from more than 30 villages that surround these locations. Surgery is performed at Peki and Hohoe, which are relatively bigger towns with minimal surgical facilities. Peki has one physician and Hohoe has two.
“These physicians can only do so much in the course of a year,” says Dr. Bada. “They are so stretched, seeing patients from more than 30 villages. In these parts of Ghana, there is probably one physician for every 100,000 to 200,000 people, so for most people in these areas there is no healthcare except for when we are there.”
Although a wide assortment of maladies are treated during the trips, the most common illnesses are malaria, river blindness, pneumonia and other infectious diseases. The teams also perform about 45 surgical procedures each trip, such as hysterectomies, appendectomies and other acute surgeries. School supplies, including pencils, notebooks and backpacks, are also distributed to the children in the villages.
“Our supplies are relatively basic, such as medications, antibiotics, sanitary supplies, needles, syringes and surgical supplies, such as gloves and sutures,” says Dr. Bada. “One of the biggest hurdles we have is paying for the supplies to be shipped to Ghana, which are packed locally and then shipped in 20-foot containers.”
Dr. Bada started Save Africa Foundation Inc., which raises money and accepts medical supplies and equipment to help defray costs of the medical mission trips. Financial donations may be mailed to the foundation at 1673 N. Royal St., Jackson, Tennessee, 38305. To donate medical equipment or supplies, call Dr. Bada at the Ultimate Health Clinic at 731-265-1997.
“My hope is to have ventilation equipment, as well as permanent locations within which to hold the clinics,” says Dr. Bada.
Plans for this year’s trip are well underway with a scheduled departure in August. Dr. Bada already is gathering supplies and making arrangements to leave his clinic in Jackson behind for two weeks to treat the sick in Ghana.
Dr. Bada, who grew up in Ghana, feels a calling to donate his time and money and make the medical mission trips to Ghana. “This mission is important to me because I have been given so much in my life that I want to do something for those who have nothing,” he says. “My father is Nigerian and my mother is from Ghana, so this mission gives me the opportunity give back to my roots.”