Dr. Chrisctopher Huffer and abandoned baby This week's Staying Connected is

little different. We decided to feature a 1976 graduate of Delphi High School and enrolled in the Indiana University School of Medicine. As a resident in that program, Chris Huffer had the opportunity to spend two months in Kenya, Africa learning a different way to administer medicine and cope with various diseases.

Chris is the son of Griffin Anderson, a fourth-grade teacher at Hillcrest and local attorney Jim Huffer.

Because Chris was able to provide an abundant amount of valuable and interesting information, his story will continue next week. We think you will find Chris' experiences eye-opening and thought-provoking. Chris writes...

I became involved with the Indiana University-Kenya Program by being a medical student at IU School of Medicine and as an internal medicine resident physician at the IU medical center.

T

he IU-Kenya partnership

was started in 1990, just as Moi University School of Medicine in Eldoret, Kenya was being founded. There were several members of the IUSM faculty who had good experiences in international medicine during their training years. They wanted to set up a program where Indiana could exchange residents with a medical center in a developing country, so that both centers could benefit from shared experiences.

Since 1990, over 160 residents and 120 senior medical students have spent two months working in Kenya. Any physician who wants to go, and meets the residency's academic requirements, can be a part of the program.

The most rewarding thing about being here is seeing how the IU-Kenya partnership's efforts are making an impact on HIV in Kenya. HIV is destroying Africa. It disproportionately kills young people with new families. The end result is children who are orphans and elderly people who have no social support.

But the program is helping provide anti-retroviral drugs to these patients, and now there is hope for them. I have had patients come into the hospital, comatose, suffering from cryptococcal meningitis, a consequence of AIDS. We put them on the appropriate medicines, the program provides the antiretroviral drugs, and those same patients walk out the door, smiling, two weeks later. There's no feeling like that.

This program benefits me in several ways. First, it forces me to hone my skills as a physician. The Kenyan medical system is essentially payment-for-service.

That means, any test I order, the patient has to pay for it.

The average Kenyan earns about $1.50 a day. I can't just order a CT scan on every patient with a headache. The CT scan won't even be done unless the patient's family pays first. So you work on your physical exam skills, your skills of observation and history-taking. You only order tests when they are really needed, and you keep costs in mind.

Another way it benefits me is that I'm seeing diseases I've never seen before. Malaria, leshmaniasis, leptospirosis - I'd never seen these except in textbooks until I came to Kenya. I'm also seeing manifestations of AIDS and tuberculosis that I've never seen before. All of this contributes to my knowledge base.

I'm learning to appreciate the benefits of living in the richest country in the world. I've gained a deep admiration for my Kenyan colleagues. Their medical knowledge is pretty much the same as mine -we've read the same books, taken the same tests.

The difference is I come from a medical system that can actually afford to do the things that the textbooks say. But in Kenya, they can't. I can imagine my colleagues' frustration at knowing exactly how to save a patient's life but not having the tools to do it. Their dedication to their patients in the face of such limitations is truly noble.

The partnership benefits Kenya in a similar way. They get our perspective on the delivery of medical care, our knowledge base about how things are done in the US.

Kenyan patients are reaping a tremendous benefit from the generosity of people in the U.S. Because of the contributions of IU and donors from America, a state-of-the-art 3-story medical center was built next to Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. This provides clinic space, a new laboratory and counseling offices dedicated soley to treating HIV/AIDS.

The program is currently treating 30,000 people with HIV inWestern Kenya, with a goal of enrolling 50,000 by the end of 2007. Ground has recently been broken on a new mother/baby hospital for obstetrics and gynecology again, chiefly funded by donations from Americans and Indiana University.

Next week will be more from Chris about his experiences in Kenya and how growing up in Carroll County has been meaningful to him in this service program. The Comet invites anyone serving our country in the military and other vocations to e-mail us at dlowe@carrollcountycomet.com with their story.