Nov 13, 2006 - 04:06:25 CST
d Bismarck Tribune
By KAREN HERZOGBy KAREN HERZOG
Everybody wants their children to be healthy, said Dr. Craig Lambrecht.
So health care has become the common language of the world, said Lambrecht, a Bismarck physician, National Guard colonel and senior medical officer at an Area Support Medical Company in Iraq.
In September, Lambrecht arrived in Scania, 90 miles southeast of Baghdad.
First thing, he did a run-through of the base staffed by Minnesota's 125th Field Artillery Unit out of New Ulm, which includes what is called the Smith Gate clinic, a pediatric burn clinic housed in a trailer right outside the perimeter of the camp.
"It was readily apparent that they didn't have all the supplies they needed," he said.
The clinic, "essentially a humanitarian mission the military has picked up," Lambrecht said, only had a budget for half their volume of child patients.
When the people in Iraq had learned that the military had set up a pediatric burn clinic at Smith Gate - named for a fallen soldier from Indiana - they began bringing their children there. This small trailer is the only pediatric burn clinic in the entire country of Iraq, Lambrecht said.
Children in Iraq are at risk for burns because of several factors, Lambrecht said, including living around hazardous materials and cooking over open fires.
Lambrecht and the other soldiers considered the situation:"How the heck do we put together a program to get supplies?
"We came up with this plan."
"This plan" is a military-civilian mission to recruit donations to supply the clinic's needs. Lambrecht's goal was to get enough supplies to keep the clinic operational for a year and half.
The project already is looking like a potentially great success: "It's going to work,"said Lambrecht by phone from Iraq.
Lambrecht and the others who work with the children at Smith Gate - 10 medics, two military doctors and two Iraqi doctors - are making lists and clearing space for supplies, some of which have already been sent, and those which are to come.
Since the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a column on the clinic Nov. 5, the outpouring of help has been incredible, said Carrol Dobler, director of the Medcenter One Foundation, which is coordinating the project.
By last week, $11,000 in checks had arrived, a stack 2 inches high, she said, many from Minnesotans who had read the story. Locally, school classes, such as St. Mary's Elementary in Bismarck, have started fundraising for the clinic, gathering health and school supplies, toys and clothing for the children treated at Smith Gate.
Children such as a young boy brought to the clinic with severe burns, who had been cleaning his bike with a kerosene compound. When he later lit a stove, the flashback ignited the kerosene residue and burned the whole front of his body.
"He's lucky he didn't die," Lambrecht said. Without Smith Gate, he would have, Lambrecht said.
Though his burns looked ghastly, he's now doing incredibly well, the doctor said.
"No question these children have better outcomes, fewer deaths, and the local providers are learning from us as we are learning from them," he said.
"Health care affords us an opportunity to build a culture of trust in Iraq. There are no hidden agendas, just care and compassion for sick children who need our care."
Children are brought to the clinic from all over Iraq, from the Turkish border to the Iranian border. As the only pediatric burn unit in Iraq, Smith Gate can offer services found nowhere else in Iraq.
Sometimes it's frustrating, Lambrecht said. Children who would be hospitalized in the U.S. have no hospitalization options there. In fact, ambulances from Iraqi hospitals bring their child patients to the Smith Gate clinic for care.
Burn care is very labor-intensive, he said. Many family members don't understand the need for vitamins, nutrition, hydration, he said.
"When it's 135 degrees outside, hydration can mean the difference between living and dying."
So Smith Gate staff do their best. They do a lot of debridement - removal of dead skin from burns to prevent infection - which is incredibly painful, Lambrecht said. They give physical therapy advice to families, provide burn ointments and special dressings, antibiotics, and advice on nutrition and hydration and send them home with supplies.
This work is in addition to the soldiers' regular missions:It's extra work but so incredibly rewarding, Lambrecht said.
"You just multi-task," he said. "It's war. Without family here, it keeps you busy with another purpose. It's actually a joy to do."
Individuals, school classes, church, civic groups and medical companies and personnel, are offering help.
"Everybody can do something and (all contributions)go right to the source," he said.
The first shipments of supplies sent through Medcenter One are en route, said Brenda Tachenko, the hospital's central processing manager.
Tachenko is spearheading the task force for the Medcenter One Foundation - she's available to speak to schools, civic and service groups about the project, collecting supplies and coordinating the logistics of sending off the supplies.
"People are terribly generous," she said. "The response we have seen is not just local. There's been a great response from the Minneapolis area."
Tachenko has received calls offering extra supplies from a hospital in South Carolina, from a representative from 3M checking on what that company can donate, and from a sterilizer company wanting to donate a tabletop sterilizer - instruments now are not able to be sterilized, only receive a high-level disinfection, which uses caustic solutions that will eventually damage them, she said.
Five to 30 patients are seen at the clinic every day, according to the Medcenter One Foundation - if supplies are low, children must be turned away.
Lambrecht would really like local children to see the effects of what they're giving, he said.
After going through their painful debridement, the first thing Smith Gate children get to do is pick something from the toy box. At the same time, their moms and dads get to pick out some clothes - it's getting cold over there about now, he said.
People can donate money through the Medcenter One Foundation, which stays in contact with Lambrecht to track his most urgent needs, Tachenko said. They also can send packages through the postal service to the address listed on Medcenter One's Web site at www.medcenterone.com.
The letters being received from donors "bring you to tears," Tachenko said. "It touches the hearts of all ages, all people."
The 30 boxes sent so far have included varied donations such as liquid pain relievers, toothbrushes, dressings, soap, multivitamins, shampoos and more. Getting ready to be sent, everything from T-shirts to stuffed animals, soaking basins, sterile supplies, crayons and surgical instruments from a company in Chicago.
Tachenko said that Medcenter is using its purchasing knowledge and skills to acquire supplies from companies it does business with.
When medical supplies marketers visit, "I hit them all up," Tachenko said. "No one leaves without a Smith Gate brochure."
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