man we tend to take seattle's top rated medical facilities for granted hospital such as swedish medical center it's known for highly skilled doctors and nurses comprehensive care or state of the art equipment and philanthropist is not a medical specialty but rather a specialty of the heart and as it turns out there's an incredible humanitarian mission with roots right here at swedish that stretches halfway around the world ethiopia is located in the heart of east africa a nation rich in culture but economically destitute it's among the world's poorest countries nowhere is that poverty more evident than in the health care system life was for ever changed i'll tell you right my reaction was either go big or go home because they had so many problems so long as he chose to go big in less than a year he was back in ethiopia with a small army of doctors nurses and technicians from swedish their goal to bring the bill lack lion out of the dark ages when we talk about the fact that there's no hot water available in the most basic things like a basic amenities things that we take for granted never ethiopia which is very close to eighty million people there are we think about sixteen anesthesiologists in the country so we have multiples more here one hospital multiple hospitals in king county the discrepancy is huge market really right there until as a o l arrived on the scene women had never had epidurals available during labor and delivery and c sections were done only under general anesthesia which is considered unsafe they did not have a recovery room process at all when we are  decided you know half the globe thought up but there were certainly surprised and it gave us some credibility that we were willing to just really work hard that we weren't there just to stand and observe and direct them how they should behave or what they should be but we were actually physically going to make this happen there is no comparison to be made and we get the cadillac version and they wait for days to see if they might have a resolution to their problem and death is very common almost all from here has been donated by swedish hospital anaesthesia machines gurneys monitors and in this room shelves of anesthesia supply is generated by swedish everything from masks to disposable syringes initially you are looking at shipping all this equipment to ethiopia through djibouti which was going to be very expensive and take very long and and then it turned out that we found out that boeing does deliveries to airlines and they will poise doing such great work overseas in areas that really need their work another primary goal is to make the black lion a strong teaching hospital you can always comfort her and let her know that she's here and that she's in recovery they forget very forgetful and let her know that she's going to be ok even with dramatic improvements in care training and equipment the hospital faces yet another huge challenge one of the things that surprised us was how fragile that means no hot water and surgeries for people who've been waiting for days must be cancelled in the basement there's standing water where corroded pipes leak onto electrical wires oh a lot of them have had water dripping on them for ever originally put these supports in which was state of the art but they've all rusted through it and one day this all there is good for the stores because it's that fragile outside the horrors continue the hospital sewage treatment system failed years ago all of the sewage from the hospital comes down to this stream the sewage treatment which is over here which are through the trees you can't quite see is completely broken so nothing is treated and it comes down and it ends up in the rivers in the city thank there are times that salafi feels absolutely hopeless that the needs are just too overwhelming it's just impossible but the hope comes when i look back and we and the americans feel it is not they who inspire but rather their ethiopian colleagues who do so much with so little i met with the residents this morning in a bunch of staff and the doctors here make very little money and very dedicated dawson and i'm here with my colleague put some of our if you're pink community in seattle cordially invite you to attend the first annual fundraising gala which will be held october twelfth at emmel downs ballroom the purpose of this event is to raise funds to support vital social cultural cultural programs which the community center provides to over ten thousand people there that will include great ethiopian food entertainment fashion show live action and a chance to experience a rich heritage and prominent acclaimed ethiopian hospitality we will highly encourage you to attend this is torek event and support our programs for additional information or to purchase tickets you can call they typically center two zero six three two five zero three zero four or go to our website at w w w e c c had all that org again that website is w w w e c seattle dot org thank you very much hospital in seattle and the organization started out working in going to italy to hospitals in south america along the model where groups of doctors and nurses would go out and help provide surgical procedures on a short term basis for one week as somebody organizations united states and all over the world and this was done for several years but then the group felt that they wanted to follow a different model that this was really not a sustainable type of thing that people would help who got the surgery but in fact when you pack up and leave and go home you've really made no difference in terms of the care provided on the ground locally could help the people that got the surgery but that's as far as it goes and so i do is to try and get involved in a project that would make a difference in terms of the care that was provided along to some sort of more sustainable ongoing project that would along the lines of the old saying that if you teach someone if you give somebody a fish you help them but if you teach them to fish then they can help themselves and so that was sort of the guiding principle of starting this project know summarize and it's true we kind of got started in ethiopia maybe five six years ago now and in a sense we've kind of found each other we were looking at a number of hospitals in africa started there and we've been going back now for four or five years where we're still  sort of anaesthesia and surgery and and certainly there were a number of areas where we saw we could help firstly in terms of the physical plant the operating rooms their actual the stage of the operating rooms the equipment that they had in the operating rooms in terms of the end of the surgical equipment and then secondly in terms of personnel and again that's the medical the the medical students the doctors they're all great that's no issue they have great training and they're good doctors and they dedicated and where we felt we could help him was in this area all the proving equipment improving the way the operating rooms function in helping them develop nursing made progress i think when we first started when i first walk in that hospital where do you start where do you start i mean just everything is in need and truthfully i'm thinking this isn't possible this isn't possible we're a little group you know where we're but i think we've kind of surprised ourselves and that one of the big things that keeps us going as if we look behind us to what we've done  we've done a lot and conditions are definitely better there today than they were when we started and it is certainly not just our group there's lots of groups sort of trying to help the hospital i think modesty aside we've been one of the more effective ones  but the as dr needleman said the doctors there are capable that's not an issue but they're really technology starved they i really want the newest and the latest equipment drugs they know about it they read about it they have that the teaching programs we've done has encouraged this because it it is definitely better  initially well firstly i retired from my work three years ago so i was looking for somebody to get involved in environ tarmon time and this seemed the ideal project to be involved in to you know something where i can get back here's my medical skills to help people i've worked in seattle for twenty nine years in seattle has lots of doctors and there's no shortage of medical care and we have great medical facilities and here was a way to go somewhere and do something in a place that really has an incredible need for it were all services are really needed for me there's another small dimension is that i'm originally from south africa and so for me the idea of going back to the african continent i went to medical school in south africa and then left and came to united states so for me the idea of going back to africa and giving back something from what you know were there when i got my great story was also for me but what it takes to set up such a facility say in africa back last fall is not the same it's much more much less and therefore actually with a small amount of money you can actually quite be effect over there so sometimes it's great to do are just maybe a skill expensive part of medical care very intensive lots of machines and monitors nurses and personnel involved lab support it's an expensive undertaking to set up an i c u per bed in the united states i'm sure as well over a million dollars for all that the sort of equipment in ethiopia in the black lion in particular they're really working hard to upgrade their i c u capabilities and yeah we've been able to help them we brought them a lot of monitors and beds and  to made that maybe for twenty thousand dollars we can bring them up pretty darn good i see you bed with appropriate monitors and things like that so yeah i mean the difference really is from a million dollars to maybe twenty thousand we're bringing equipment that is still very serviceable we're really particular not to bring them jump because a lot of proops have sent a lot of equipment that's truthfully worthless and so we only send the same brand of anything so they can service it we bring technicians who help them learn to take it apart and put it back together we're trying to extend the useful life of all of this for a long time where we are really at least to the best of our billet to try to think that there's this through soup to nuts so that we don't drop equipment and run and we really help prepare them and get them set to use it so it's more about helping themselves for the long ever so they can share the power is very interesting because it ties into the fundraiser event that some  non governmental we don't have anything to do with the ethiopian government nor the united states government we don't get any support or any interaction with either nor are we religious we are all kind of grassroots volunteers this is a people to people effort and yeah any but if it comes to the fundraiser and his willingness to give us a little money i promise you we will stretch that many many fold over and you're right for what we can do with a thousand dollars ever since here in the states is orders of training for three years and so last year in our second year there they had four new residents in anesthesia and now they've added another eight so already they're honest to your department as well as tripled in size and specialties vascular surgeons go so we know helping the hospital in a much broader area as well and we've now expanded to other hospitals as well for instance one of the for us now is involved in treating patients in kidney failure set of surgeries to get ripped patients ready for dialysis program and that's going to be expanded on this coming trip and we're also taking people along in the coming trip we're going to look at the idea of setting up a dialysis program at the public hospital the only dialysis available in at us right now is a private hospitals and patients have to pay a lot of money to get dialysis and so for poor people there is no dialysis option available for kidney failure patients and so one of our next goals goal will be there this year i'm going to mention for three weeks this fall we go twice a year for three weeks at a time and long term i tell all of our group we need to have a twenty year horizon on this this is not a quick fix it it's going to need to go on long after we're all dead and if we can keep a twenty thirty year horizon and if we can build an organization with people from seattle people from the ethiopian community and doctors from the medical community who are willing to keep that long term view i think we could have a really amazing impact and it's it's different in that it's not a university driven it's not a governmental driven thing it's really a people to people effort i think part of our efficiency  because all of us that go work in medical care we work in yours where the rubber meets the road and so i feel like we have a good perspective on what's important and what's not and we try to really focus on important things so anyway long term  i'd like to see this really sustain this get the ethiopian community more involved we are gaining we're getting more members all the time and it's slow it's a struggle it's a hard sell here in seattle you know most seattle where's ethiopia myself included you know first time after time if ever were is if you're out of it but if if were successful in painting the true picture of what life is like there and what the conditions are at the black client it's really hard to walk away and those ethiopians in the community here who are into addison have family there and they're about the black lie and they'll understand immediately because it's desperate and we just  we have but quite a number of people with us who don't have a medical background because there's a lot of grunt work involved in this we have cleaned rooms and painted rooms and cleaned equipment and there's a lot of work that way so if we have people who are interested in joining us and helping we'd be really happy for that we also spend many many hours in seattle really getting equipment ready to be shipped and that's an enormous job that you can always get ahold of our group through our website our website is all like we can do it for close to twenty but because we get a lot of equipment that's donated we recondition that equipment we've had donated i c u beds oxygen things for about five thousand dollars we figure we can put an i c u it together private well certainly i think it different parts of the project for instance we start out collecting equipment and having to pack it we have a storage facility where we accumulate equipment while we're getting it ready to ship over and so we spend many weekend days and packing the stuff up into boxes and creating it and then we have to get it to a shipping company because we have to deliver it ready for shipping on pallets to boeing ship so you know starting from the very basic things somebody wants to come and spend some time with us packing sheets in boxes as simple as that and getting things ready to ship over and then when we go on trips there's always the language issues so we have all we've usually had somebody along with us to help interpret her role or there are always some issues that come up and so there is a place for we've taken medical students we've taken other students  along obviously that i'm playing the same role as a physician or a nurse working in a hospital but they're always in a straight and other things that need to be done so certain we're open to that and in terms of helping us on our website helping with administrative work helping set up a database of donors there are all kinds of things that we can use help with you know in terms of the overall aspect of all the work we do and certainly people on our website there is a means for working and bringing a group of about twenty eight people for that three week period and then we'll go again in the spring typically end of february first of march we try to go twice a year for three weeks so it's good we're on the ground in  invitation to you to attend this event to support this great cause i think it will be available at the door for mission and for additional information also you can call for two five seven seven three six six seven eight and get more information again four two five seven seven three six eight seven eight thank you the pack you and they have been teaching every day since the very first of the month a group of six pack you student nurses it's fun to watch it because our american nurses are strict but they are  where people learn the most and they retain it very good hear it's been more challenging in the room but they're bright young new graduates and so their brains are ready to absorb and they're not set in their ways that's what's been the most helpful thing and you can always comfort her working patient care by seeing our example of that and work ethic and i think that it's be a shift in their attitude towards organization of their general perioperative services cleaning out some store brooms and then it was a project that took a life of itself and based on our kind of getting it going and the nursing staff and the cleaning staff have now gone on and cleaned out another four or five rooms and sorting through more mounds of old and discarded material and even good material well i see that the s e a l has started something new and different that is great is we're not just here to donate our expertise and our time and supplies we are here to teach them what we do so that they can carry on without us we're trying to make them independent to function in a way that they've never done before they've always been reliant on other countries coming are moments when you see care that you think is substandard and you get frustrated but on the other hand you see individuals working there working under very trying conditions and trying to maintain the highest standards of medical care and i think in some ways they think we're inspiring them but i think in a sense seeing people like that spire i just want to continue working here and help make this a better place to work provide care that block saw my postal presentation to every ten minutes and here we have a post hoped for and our relationship with the residents and its these in the hospital and the whole medical staff here has been it's been really affirming they've been so positive and so  essay oh to raise funds we think those funds need to stay doing what we do best in the operating room so i expect to use any money that  raise for helping transportation primarily for the hospital technicians and the nurses who need it we would use it to purchase equipment and fill in the gaps for what we perceive to be vitally qui the department of and it's these are really desperately needs a fiber optic product the scope they desperately needs more than just scopes we brought down this these machines in reality they could use another six to eight more without any problems we brought  n hewlett packard philips patient care monitors friends these are were using those also on the pack you this hospital could use another thirty monitors easily so a lot of our fundraising efforts would go that way it'll probably be more of a condition of our coming back to anything it's a small lever we have they clearly would love us to come back and i think we'd like to come back but we're pretty outcome oriented in terms of that they're getting new pharmaceuticals and to the department of anesthesia at surgery it's impossible to try to run a department of anesthesia without a reliable supply of basic medicine and that's what they've been trying to do so  but i think want us to put it in perspective and realize that we're not going to change it overnight and accept the positive changes you made and then just know that there's more to come back to do in the future there has to be a continued presence for there to be change you can't just show up and think that things are going to change in in the timeframe that you're there for a month i mean that's it's like no time in comparison to slow things hard to change richard has said that he believes that this can become the mayo clinic around africa and some people really think he's crazy so when you talk to me about your view of richard and how that's going to work with him and he's going to make this his vision idea because that's what i hate giving i think this kind of work whatever comes from this film or anything like this is a call to people all over the world to care to care about their