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Providing Medical Support to Disaster, War and Impoverished Areas

Surgical Care

Orthopedic Surgery for Ibu Sami

January 2007

Ibu Sami is a young woman who survived the Indonesian earthquake of May 2006, but had her leg badly injured. She and her family had lost everything in the disaster and she did not have the funds to have the necessary surgery. So she continued to work (she weaves fabric for a living, using her legs to operate the loom), and was in constant pain. RMF’s Dr. Kevin Thomas and Jenni Myers visited our projects in Indonesia in November 2006, and they immediately decided to help.

Nick Taranto writes from Indonesia:
Attached are several photos from Ibu Sami in Tirtomarto. Kevin, your US$100 donation allowed Ibu Sami to visit the provincial orthopedic clinic, where surgeons inserted a plate and seven screws in order to correct her previously untreated compound tibial fracture. The photo of the x-ray says it all.