And welcome to Kirabis in this series of profiles we will look at some of the important aspects
of the Australian Development Program in Kirabis. "The Kirabis Government said to us that the
particular priorities that they would like Australias involvement in, first of all basic
education. This could be followed up by TVET, Technical Vocational Education and Training.
Workforce skills development. We look at also economic development and business development
and more recently we have been asked to concentrate on infrastructure." But there are also other
areas where Australia has played an effective and historic role. For example, in health.
With a population the size of Wollongong our tiny country will have great difficulty in
providing all of the capacity required to service all health needs of our people. And
every year under the umbrella of the Pacific Island project teams of medical professionals
arrive from Australia, to assist. "Your the boss." "The Royal Australian College of Surgeons
has really imininent people who volunteer their time and their costs for coming up here
are provided by DFAT from Australian Aid." This team of plastic surgeons and their support
are from Interplast. "Interplast is an Australian based not for profit organisation, we send
teams of plastic and reconstruction surgeons around the Asia-Pacific region to provide
surgeries but also to train up local medical personal. Over the past four months the hospital
administration, together with the Australian High Commision, has spread the word of the
teams visit. So there is no time to waste and it is downstairs to begin assessing the
more than 120 people who have come from all over Kirabis for treatment. "It has an enormous
impact on peoples lives here, it changes lives, particularly where there are serious social
impediments. For example, disfigurements, when these things immediately remediated by
their surgery, the life of the person is turned around." A high proportion of the patients
are babies with cleft lip and cleft paler conditions. Some years ago, Nicara had a bad
encounter with a pot of boiling water, both hands were severely burned. During their last
visit the team did some initial work, her right hand is almost back to normal but there
is a need for more work on the still badly disfigured left hand. "So we have brought
all of this equipment with us from Australia, so we are able to do our operations and we
are just going through the boxes at the moment, making sure everything is here so we can start
operating tomorrow." "It has been busy and demanding, we have had very interesting mix
of cases, from babies to adults with big tuna's. Some very challenging, some we won't be able
to treat here, others we will have to refer to other specialists, but by and large we
can handle most of it and it is going to be a very busy two weeks of operating, because
nearly every patient that has come in will need a procedure." "So this is a three year old
boy and he has a cyst on the top of his head that we are going to take out for him. So
because he is three years old he can't have it done in the clinic because he wouldn't
tolerate having local anaesthetic so he is having a general anaesthetic." " Even though
the facilities here are realitivily basic, it is in fact the skill of the team that makes
it possible to operate here. And by us all working together we can actually achieve quite
advanced surgery it just needs forward planning and helping to train the staff here to continue
to care for the children after they have been treated here." :"The first time I came to
Kirabis was in 1991, I just felt at home straight away when I came here and I kept coming back.
It is just that there are so many more people now and the hospitals are no bigger than what
it was 20 years ago but it has just got to deal with twice as many patients and it really
shows." Nicara had surgery on her burned hand just after the team arrived, and now six days
later she has returned for further treatment. "This child had a very bad burn contracture
and we have put in a number of grafts and released the fingers and all of the grafts
have taken very well this is just a week ago so we are just doing a dressing change and
now the child will have a functioning hand. The good thing about children is that they
are like rubber and you can release their contratures and they come out nicely. Yes
we have had lots of these this trip. We have had probably half a dozen different types
of severe burns that weren't well managed primarily so the wounds have healed, in what
we call by secondary intention, by what we mean all of the fingers are fused together
and we have released it all and now we have go that. But with proper primary care of course
you wouldn't need to do this secondary surgery and the results would be much better. We saw
nearly 170 patients and we have operated on well over 100 and most of them were babies
and a fantastic case mix of cases both adult and children, and we have some big surgery
and some very rewarding. We are doing the dressings today. Very happy. Lots of happy
mums and dads with their babies repaired lips.