September 2022 Update
Dear Team,
We send greetings to all our gracious supporters. We are hopeful that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is behind us now, and our medical team is looking forward to returning to visit some of our established projects and to start new ones.
Our first major journey will take a team of doctors and nurses to Kiribati from October 31 to November 10, 2022. We plan to provide hands-on teaching, classroom lectures, and clinical guidance as we evaluate old and new patients. We will be focusing on our program to interrupt the transmission of hepatitis B from mother to child which is the most common method by which our patients acquire the disease. We will also be extending our outreach to some of the outer islands where the clinics are not as well equipped. We will be bringing supplies, including endoscopy equipment, that have been donated or purchased with your generous gifts.
In February-March 2023 another team has been organized to travel to Papua New Guinea. In addition to our long-standing project in Popondetta, we will be speaking with national and local governmental officials as well as business executives in Port Moresby and Milne Bay. We hope to establish other provincial and possibly national hepatitis B programs in PNG where liver disease has a very high prevalence.
In April 2023 we will travel to Madagascar with an organization called Australian Doctor for Africa (ADFA). This group has been working in Madagascar for many years, and we have had virtual meetings with the local physicians who will assist us in establishing hepatitis programs in the areas where they practice. This is an exciting opportunity to extend our presence into Africa.
We are hopeful that a return to Tonga will follow thereafter. We have been working with the World Health Organization to write national guidelines and provide further assistance to the program which started just as the COVID pandemic was evolving. Our partners in Myanmar continue to do amazing work under the most difficult circumstances. We have regular meetings via the internet to discuss patient care and teach topics of interest. Communication with North Korea is still non-existent, but we pray for a revival of the program there, which in the past was our largest.
These are exciting times, and we are thankful to each of you for your continued support. Take care of yourselves and each other.
With gratitude,
David C. Hilmers, MD
Chief Medical Officer
