Robert Sullivan of Freehold, N.J., a fifth-year physician’s assistant student at Wagner College, spent five weeks this summer studying in Ghana, West Africa, to complete his infectious-disease rotation.
“Two years ago, I was part of the first group of Wagner students to travel to Kenya in East Africa with Professor Steven Snow, participating in an HIV outreach program,” Sullivan said. “After experiencing healthcare in Africa first-hand, I knew that I wanted to return to Africa for this clinical rotation.”
Once on the ground in Ghana, Sullivan divided his time between the emergency department at a regional hospital and a rural clinic providing medical care to all the villages within a 30-mile radius. The clinic, staffed only by Sullivan and four nurses, mostly dealt with cases of malaria, typhoid fever and cholera. Malaria is the most common tropical disease in developing countries, affecting nearly half a billion people worldwide; it is sometimes referred to as the “common cold of Africa.”
In addition to treating infectious tropical diseases, the rural clinic provided medical care to village women undergoing childbirth.
“In the village clinics, there is a severe shortage of medical supplies, resources and trained professionals. Staff consists only of nurses, no doctors,” Sullivan said. “The clinics are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and staff sometimes travel to peoples’ homes if patients are unable to walk to the clinic.
“One night, at around 1 a.m., the mother of a pregnant patient came running into the clinic to tell us that her daughter was about to deliver. We followed her to her daughter’s small mud-hut residence, where we found the patient in active labor. Being an EMT on Staten Island for 6 years, I have delivered a few babies in my life — but nothing compared to what I was about to experience. With no medical supplies, medications or electricity, with just the gloves on my hands and a single candle to light the hut, I helped her through her childbirth and successfully delivered her healthy baby girl.
“The experience was magical for me, especially because that day happened to be the birthday of both my mother and my sister,” Sullivan recalled.
But the night was far from over.
“After that delivery, I was called to another hut to assist in another birth — and then another, and still another. It was almost as if all the pregnant women in that village decided to have their babies on the same night! By the time the sun rose, I had attended the births of four children.
“We finished around 7 a.m. and started to walk back home to the clinic,” Sullivan remembered. “Exhausted, hungry, my clothes covered in god only knows what substances, the other inhabitants of the village started coming out of their homes to praise us — the nurses and I — for all the work we had done. Within minutes, we were walking through a crowd of a hundred villagers, all singing, dancing and clapping. It was one of the happiest experiences — and definitely the most rewarding — of my entire clinical career.”
PHOTO AT TOP: Robert Sullivan with the first baby he delivered at the Manso village clinic. The two women in the picture are the child's aunt and grandmother, who were responsible for taking care of the baby until the mother was fully recovered from childbirth.
