ISHI is a volunteer driven organisation that plans and undertakes surgical missions around the world.
In December 2011, an ISHI team of 13 volunteers spent almost two weeks in Sierra Leone. Many thanks to Peter Konteh, Marina Goldman and Peacemaker for their help during this mission.
Getting to Kabala involved a 20 hour plane trip to Freetown Airport followed by a ferry crossing to the capital, and a 7 hours bumpy ride on local roads in a fully loaded bus. ISHI team members carried along with their own personal bags, all of the supplies, surgical instruments, medications and equipment they would need for the week of operations that they would soon be providing. The team arrival was broadcasted on the local radio station, which resulted in patients coming from all over the district in the following days. Some walked hours from their remote villages to get to Kabala.
In November 2010, we spent one week in Port-au-Prince. We provided surgical care to local patients, brought medical supplies for the treatment of cholera, gave medical training to local hospital staff, and brought Christmas gifts for the children in two orphanages but the highlight of the mission wasn’t the number of patients treated, the number of training given to the staff, or the number of gifts distributed to the children, it was being there and witnessing the formidable resilience of human nature in spite of the misery, the earthquake, the cholera, the hurricanes and the political instability.