Kathy Herman of Vancouver recently returned from a 10-day trip to Phnom Penh, Prey Veng and other cities in Cambodia. She was part of a team of five women volunteers to see the new “Healthy Women, Healthy World” initiative from Medical Teams International.
“I would go on a trip every month if I could. It means that much to me, because it really makes a difference,” Herman said.
Medical Teams International is a Christian health organization based in Tigard, Ore., that provides education, medical assistance and development programs to developing countries. The organization was founded in 1979 by Ron Post of Salem, Ore., to help refugees fleeing Cambodia and the genocidal killings by the Khmer Rouge regime.
Herman, 66, a flight attendant for 30 years, took her first volunteer trip to Haiti in 2012, a year after the earthquake. “We went to see a woman doing physical therapy for people who had lost limbs,” Herman said. “When you’re working with a person, when they look at you, they’re in awe that you’re helping them, that you came to visit them. But you get just as much back (from the experience).”
Herman also has traveled to Guatemala.
“I have a passion for helping people who have much less than me,” she said. “Every time I go on a trip, it convinces me more and more to give my time. You have to go to them, go to their surroundings where they’re most comfortable and communicate without speaking the language.”
The “Healthy Women, Healthy World” initiative focuses on empowering local women with health information focused on motherhood. The volunteers, staff and interpreters teach local residents about infant nutrition and keeping children health records, said Diana Burke, philanthropy adviser for Medical Teams International. One of Herman’s favorite parts of the program is the food carts, which combines the concerns of nutrition, economics and public service.
“When the moms need to work in the fields and farm, its up to the few grandmothers around to take care of the children,” Burke said. Generations of families simply don’t exist because of the genocide of the 1970s, she said. “The babies are fed sugar water, because that’s all they have.” The program staff offers a micro loan for a woman to purchase a cart and fix rice porridge and vegetables that can be sold for a nominal fee, Burke said.
Medical Teams also provides training for emergency medical services for local staff from hospitals, enabling those staff work in ambulances. “The chances of survival are increased greatly,” Burke said.
“When we were in a provincial hospital in Prey Veng, I was very surprised by the lack of sterility,” Herman said. In spite of the conditions, she said, the hospital staff were very capable despite working with so little. “I’m on a mission to get AEDs (automated external defibrillator) in the hospital,” Herman said. “We have them all over the world, on every airplane, shopping malls and schools, but none in the hospital.”
“Kathy is so wonderful in seeing a need and wanting to help in a specific way,” Burke said.
“We’re all the same the world over, we just have different maladies to deal with,” Herman said.
For more information about Medical Teams International, visit www.medicalteams.org
