ORU School of Medicine alumni, friends serve in Nigeria
The children sang joyfully amidst the trees, grateful to be safe from Boko Haram. They sang in Hausa, the language of the North, but they shouted “Hallelujah” to our delighted ears. These tiny refugees, singing their hearts out to us, remain among our most haunting memories of Africa.
During its lifetime, the ORU School of Medicine produced many committed Christian doctors. Among this group are Mark Babo, M.D. and his wife Doreen Babo, BA, DPH, who have worked for nearly 30 years to bring modern health care to Africa.
After 18 months in Kenya, they have spent 26 years in Nigeria, building three hospitals in different cities. They invited medical classmates from the Class of 1983 for a mini-reunion of service and gratitude.
The party included Paul Davis, co-founder of the Family Medicine Residency at the University of Alaska and a veteran of the U.S. Public Health Service there; Nancy Wespetal, a full-time medical missionary in Russia and the Ukraine; Brian Kilpatrick, board certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics, now practicing in West Pawlet, Vermont; and Carla Stayboldt, pathologist at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego. Non-ORU graduates included Davis’ son, Ian Davis, and Stayboldt’s husband, James Grisolia. The team was hosted by the Idahosa family, founders of Church of God Mission International in Benin City.
The mission trip centered on the Faith MediPlex, the second-largest hospital in Benin City, built by Mark and Doreen Babo over 25 years ago, together with the Idahosas’ church. We enjoyed morning devotionals there, attended by doctors, nurses and staff.
After singing and prayer, we toured the hospital and examined patients with the Nigerian doctors, providing Western insights while learning about local diseases, such as malaria. This hospital of up to 150 beds provides an expanding array of medical, obstetric and surgical services, with a kidney dialysis unit soon to open.
In partnership with local doctors, we did medical outreach clinics, including to an outlying village that had not seen doctors in over 10 years. Among the villagers, we gave aid an elderly lady who was HIV positive, many new diabetics and people with high blood pressure.
Most memorable was our outreach clinic to a camp for refugee children, orphaned by the terrorist group Boko Haram. Safely in the Christian South, these refugees from the Muslim North of Nigeria were traumatized but glad to be safe, with food, water and dry sleeping quarters. In the weeks prior to our visit, the camp rapidly doubled from 600 to 1,200 children. They sang and played joyfully, while we treated them for leprosy, scabies, malaria, filariasis and more common childhood diseases.
We taught alongside our Nigerian colleagues in a national family medicine conference on varied topics including the neurological exam, breast cancer and colon cancer screening. Our audience responded with Nigerian warmth and humor to our talks, and they presented each of us with traditional ebony carvings as mementos of our stay.
We left with a warm feeling for the Nigerian people, vibrant and energetic, and a strong desire to return again soon.
