THOUSANDS OF people in Zambia will have access to potentially life-saving ear, nose and throat treatments thanks to a mobile clinic funded by Irish donations.
President Mary McAleese, who is patron of Gorta, met the directors of the charity at Áras an Uachtaráin yesterday to mark the commissioning of the mobile unit.
The €250,000 vehicle is the brainchild of Dr Kieran O’Driscoll, a consultant ear, nose and throat surgeon based at Tullamore Hospital.
The unit will function as a mobile clinic, visiting rural locations around the capital city of Lusaka and offering out-patient services. It will also be used to bring patients to hospital.
Dr O’Driscoll noted that children were especially susceptible to treatable ear, nose and throat conditions which, when left untreated, caused deafness and sometimes death.
“There are children dying because they can’t get the foreign bodies out of their ears, then there are kids who die of chronic ear disease and get brain abscesses and meningitis and die, and then there’s the kids who can’t have their hearing restored because they haven’t got a hearing aid and they can’t get surgery to restore their hearing.”
Others suffered and died with treatable head and neck cancer as they were unable to get to medical treatment in time, he said.
Gorta chairman Andy Cole thanked the tens of thousands of Irish people whose donations made the clinic possible. “It is their compassion for people in the developing world that has allowed Dr Kieran O’Driscoll’s idea to become reality,” he said.
The mobile clinic, built by vehicle firm Cafco Dublin with advice and support from the Irish Army, will be shipped to Zambia and be operational from early 2010.
There are only three ear, nose and throat consultants in Zambia, which has a population of 12 million. There are plans to train young doctors in the speciality.
The unit can treat up to 60 patients a day.