Madagascar 2014: 23 April – 7 May

A few months ago we met Sandra, a girl from Pesaro who has been working in Madagascar for some years, where she deals with agro-food development projects. During the first meeting and after many mails exchanged with each other, we’ve got a fairly precise idea of the local social-health situation, so we have made the decision to start our voluntary work in this beautiful island too. With the help of Vittorio, another compatriot who lived in Madagascar for several years, we contacted some local doctors and health authorities, prepared all the necessary documentation and left for Toliara, capital of the region of the same name, located in the south of the country, on the Mozambique Canal. It is one of the poorest and most neglected regions of Madagascar, with a very low per capita income and extremely precarious sanitary and social conditions. We have had the opportunity to visit some public hospitals, quite dilapidated, many without diagnostic and therapeutic facilities, even basic ones, and in any case all for a fee, so, in fact, access to health services is allowed only to those who have some financial means, thus excluding a large segment of the poor population. After presenting the documentation requested to us, we worked for several days at the Saint-Luc Clinic, a private facility that made available to us, for a fee, the outpatient clinics for visits and the operating room for our interventions. Together with Dr. Cristina Sciarra, paediatrician, we visited 95 patients, almost all of them children under 12 years old, among whom we found many neurological diseases, some certainly congenital, many other results of neonatal suffering or untreated infectious diseases. We also found several cases of malnutrition due to reduced or incorrect food intake. As far as the orthopaedic aspect is concerned, we have seen many outcomes of poorly consolidated fractures, some deformities of the lower limbs, patients with fractures and congenital dislocations and a 24-year-old girl with right knee cancer. We operated on a patient with congenital hip dislocation, a patient with an exposed and infected multi-fragmented femur fracture due to a gunshot wound, we treated a perinatal humerus fracture of a 3 week old girl, we operated on a leg fracture and the patient with knee cancer. During the mission we also visited several people, both adults and children, with amputated or missing limbs due to congenital deformities, who do not have the economic possibility to have prostheses made. We were particularly impressed by the case of Nöela, a child of about 3 years of age, who was born without the lower right leg, so he had never walked before. This gave rise to the idea of establishing a fund for the payment of prostheses to the needy. The first prosthesis was for Nöela, who now walks, runs, plays, like her peers. Finally, we met another Italian, Aimone Del Ponte, who moved to Toliara, in one of the most degraded neighborhoods of the city, about 8 years ago, and where he founded, together with Mrs. Yvette, the Radler Association, which deals with the recovery and education of street children; to do this they built, at their own expense, a primary school, to which they also joined a football club. This experience has led us to activate a fund to finance projects to support school activities.

Published on May 30, 2014

Piero Petricca