Team of urologists descends on Marshall Islands
A team of American nurses and doctors is expecting to attend to a huge turnout of patients on its current mission to the Marshall Islands.
Transcript
A team of American nurses and doctors is expecting to attend to a huge turnout of patients on its current mission to the Marshall Islands.
The group of urologists will treat residents for nine days from its base at Majuro hospital.
Our correspondent in the Marshall Islands, Giff Johnson, told Christopher Gilbert on its last trip the mission's obstetrics and gynecology team saw nearly 500 patients and the visits are badly needed.
GIFF JOHNSON: Earlier in the month we had a team of OB-GYN specialists and starting from this week we'll have urology team in town and it's quite phenomenal the number of patients who turn out for these visits, which underlines the fact that we just don't have the specialties in Majuro hospital. So when we do have visiting teams like Canvasback it's just a tremendous opportunity for people here to get service and people really turn out to take advantage of the visits.
CHRISTOPHER GILBERT: When that last team visited they found serious cervical cancer problems amongst the women in the Marshall Islands. This time they're sending a urology team and they're also expecting to find tumors in a lot of the patients. Is it an ongoing problem?
GJ: I don't know that the urology team anticipates finding a lot of tumors or anything. I think they're just expecting a large turnout of people based on the fact that when the OB-GYN team was here over a 10 day period they say about 500 patients. Significantly though a lot of these preventive diagnostic services are not being provided so that people aren't finding cancer at an early stage. One of the Canvasback doctors said earlier this month is that in his practice in the U.S. he probably would see only one case of late stage cervical cancer in five years. He found five in one week in Majuro. So, it indicates that it's really great that the doctors are here to find these problems and diagnose it for local patients but it's not happening on an ongoing basis.
CG: To what extent is that a consequence of these problems not being caught by the Ministry of Health, and to what extent is it just ongoing fallout from nuclear testing?
GJ: The Marshall Islands has had a known, very high cervical cancer rate for many years. This goes back quite a while. The problem is with all cancers there's just no way to identify one or another as to the cause. Obviously, radiation exposure of populations here does increase cancer levels. But it's hard to pin it down in particular instances. The challenge in the Marshall Islands is getting early diagnosis. The challenge for the Ministry of Health right now is the hospital is short staffed on physicians and has been short staffed for quite some time.
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