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Peru – Meet Dr Dotun Ogunyemi

November 16, 2007 - Peru

by Steve Henrichon

Meet Dr Dotun Ogunyemi. Dotun is the OBGYN residency director at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and Associate Professor at UCLA Medical School. He is also on the RMF advisory board. Dotun had some time off over Thanksgiving break and he decided to come out and visit our clinic. I had a mental picture of what I expected Dotun to look like after hearing his thick Nigerian accent on the phone. I was at the airport in Lima to receive Dotun when he got off the plane. Shaved head, stylish Randy Jackson-like glasses, Diamond earing, Air Jordans, and a Diamond New York Yankees belt buckle. This guy is the hippest OBGYN I have ever met. I got to know him pretty well over the next few days and I received some insight into the wonderful world of obstetrics. Dotun estimated that he has delivered over 15,000 babies in his career. Holy $%&#!! He mentioned that he delivered over one thousand babies in one year. Mind you the Cedars Sinai has a premiere maternity ward in Los Angeles and they deliver 7000 babies annually. Dotun would have delivered a significant portion of those babies. Dr Dotun knows his stuff.

We took advantage of Dotun’s time in Peru and we arranged for him to administer two workshops. The first workshop was for local Physicians on such topics as Post Partum Hemorrhaging, Hypertension in pregnancy, and HIV transmission during pregnancy. This event ended up being a success but it was a LOT more work than originally expected. We had to translate 200 of Dotun’s dense slides into Spanish. I can think of many things I would rather do than translate 200 slides into Spanish including watching my beard grow in the mirror, eating rocky mountain oysters, and rooting for the Yankees.

The hard work paid off and the seminar ended up being a great success. Many physicians in the area are not very familiar with such topics as HIV transmission so the event was well received. Sixteen local physicians showed up for the event and Dotun spoke to them for 4 hours. By taking this initiative, we were able to identify ourselves as a leader in the medical community.

The second workshop was aimed at pregnant women. It was more of a discussion session about topics such as normal birthing milestones, irregular bleeding during pregnancy, cervical cancer, etc. Twelve women showed up. The session was quite interactive and we received positive feedback from the women.

Skipping ahead to present day, Dotun is interested in sending some of his OBGYN residents to work at the clinic. In order for this program to work however, we would need to arrange for the residents to perform vaginal surgeries at the local hospitals. This may be harder to pull off but we are looking into it.

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