Berks County doctor helps Ethiopians set up nation's first modern trauma unit

Just running the Reading Hospital emergency department, Dr. Charles F. Barbera gets plenty of perspective on health care.

But he discovered even more this summer in Africa, helping to open the first modern trauma unit in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.

"I was one of several doctors who went with a South Korean Christian medical group to help with the center," said Barbera, 45, who has been chairman of the hospital's department of emergency for the past 10 years.

Barbera resides in Wyomissing with his wife, Mary, a behavior analyst, and their children Lucas, 13, and Spencer, 11.

"Ethiopia is probably more than 20 or so years behind as far as advances in medical treatments," said Barbera, who worked in the country with an international medical team at the Myungsung Christian Medical Center from June 18 to July 3.

"I had never been to a Third World country, so this was an eye-opening experience for me, to learn about the practice of medicine and health care needs in other places," he said.

What Barbera mainly learned is how lucky he feels being in the American medical system, because of its advanced diagnostic technology and medical treatments. That's true even with all of the most recent political tumult about the need for health care reform.

"First, there is a lot we take for granted in terms of the basics - food, water, shelter, electrical supply," Barbera said. "In Ethiopia, everything is pay in advance - in cash - for medical services.

"If you can't afford it (the care), it just isn't there. People will choose to go home and die."

Frustration and need

Barbera said life expectancy is about 45 years in this African nation of about 78 million people. About 8 million people live in Addis Ababa.

Diseases and illnesses are also much different from what is seen in the West.

"You don't have the heart disease and obesity there," Barbera said, noting that he was asked by a United Nation's contingent to serve one day at an Eritrea border refugee camp where he saw about 400 patients in a makeshift clinic with dirt floors and walls and a sheet metal roof.

"I was seeing malaria, typhus and bacterial eye infections that can lead to blindness," he said. "There were serious burns because of people commonly cooking over open fires, thyroid diseases and some autism and trauma.
"It was frustrating because only some of the things I could treat. I did what I could, but breast cancer, blindness I couldn't do anything about."

Ironically, in a country whose medical system is backward by Western standards, trauma suffered by victims in modern traffic accidents is a growing problem.

Increasing numbers of patients are transferred to Addis Ababa from more limited, smaller medical facilities throughout the country.

"The new trauma unit was already seeing up to 20 patients a day, many of them brought to the hospital days after the trauma occurred because there is no emergency medical transport system; everything is by private carrier, sometimes by animal," Barbera said.

The trauma unit is part of the city's 100-bed hospital, which has five beds in a room and no private rooms, Barbera said. The intensive care area is one room with three beds.

Nations work together

When the trauma center opened, Tadesse Haile, Ethiopia's trade and state minister, said his nation faces a lack of comprehensive medical services such as modern trauma units.

"There is a need to do more to establish such modern medical centers in the capital as it moves to be home for various people and international organizations of the world," he said.

According to Barbera, the new trauma unit, with highly sophisticated diagnostic equipment, will have comprehensive trauma services with trauma, neuro and orthopedic surgeons.

Officially opened in 2004, the Myungsung Christian Medical Center has been providing medical services in 10 departments, including internal medicine, surgery, obstetric, gynecology, pediatrics and neurosurgery.

"Keeping doctors there (in Ethiopia) is a huge problem, because when a doctor comes here to the U.S. to be trained, he will stay here - never go back," Barbera said. "Doctors there get paid about $600 a month, about 70 cents an hour."

Barbera credited the Japanese, South Koreans, Swedes, Italians and Americans with trying to upgrade Ethiopia's medical care system.

"It is a place where people often must bargain and negotiate for care, and waiting rooms are filled," Barbera said. "I hope to go back within a year - and maybe bring some of my colleagues."

Contact Bruce R. Posten: 610-371-5059 or bposten@readingeagle.com.