{"id":3148,"date":"2010-07-21T11:24:14","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T10:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=3148"},"modified":"2010-07-21T13:03:03","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T12:03:03","slug":"sandra-lako-an-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2010\/07\/21\/sandra-lako-an-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandra Lako: An introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/columns\/icons\/sandra_lako.jpg\" alt=\"Sandra Lako\" width=\"160\" height=\"110\" align=\"left\" \/>When I was two years old my parents moved onboard the M\/V Anastasis, a hospital ship run by the organisation <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercyships.org.uk\/\">Mercy Ships<\/a>, which provided relief and medical services to communities in developing countries. The ship was my home for 14 years. The greatest advantage about life on a ship was the opportunity to see so much of the world and meet people from all over. Needless to say, my childhood was unique.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As a teenager, I was able to spend time with patients on the ward, see the ship\u2019s medical team in action and on occasion help out in one of the medical clinics in a nearby village. One day, we went out to a village in Macumba, Sierra Leone where there had been a measles outbreak. Two children died that day and it made a huge impact on me. It was then that I decided to pursue medicine. And so the journey began; I went to medical school in the Netherlands, with the desire to one day go back to Africa.<\/p>\n<p>During medical school I was fortunate to be able to do two internships in Africa, one in the Gambia and one in Tanzania. Both internships taught me a lot about myself, and about medicine in the tropics. Spending three months in a district hospital in Tanzania enabled me to experience various aspects of what it is like to work and live in a developing country: the excitement, the cultural differences, the challenges, the limitations etc. It definitely prepared me for what was to come.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after completing a postgraduate diploma course in tropical medicine and hygiene at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, I accepted a position in Sierra Leone, as a community health physician at a land-based project run by Mercy Ships. The project was just starting and my job was to set up an outpatient clinic.<\/p>\n<p>Once I arrived in Sierra Leone I realised I had a big task ahead of me. What did I know about setting up a clinic from scratch? Fortunately I was able to work alongside two brilliant national doctors in a pediatric outpatient department at an NGO hospital for a few weeks in order to learn the language, spectrum of disease, national treatment guidelines, etc. I also realized that child mortality in Sierra Leone was the highest in the world, with 1 in 4 children not reaching the age of 5. Based on this statistic and the example outpatient department at the NGO hospital, I decided to open a pediatric clinic. I never regretted that decision.<\/p>\n<p>My initial commitment of 1 year soon stretched into 4 \u00bd years and the pediatric outpatient clinic was a great success. With 14,000 children registered, and seeing 50-60 patients a day, I knew that the clinic was meeting a huge need. And although there were daily challenges, I am very thankful for the opportunity I had to set up and run that clinic. After 4 \u00bd years however, it was time to move on.<\/p>\n<p>I went home for a year, spending time in the USA, The Netherlands, and Haiti before deciding to return to Freetown to take on a new position; a new role with a new organisation, the Welbodi Partnership.\u00a0 And so, here I am, on a new journey. A journey I will share with you through my blogs.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Sandra Lako<\/strong> is a doctor from the Netherlands who previously spent 4 \u00bd years in Sierra Leone setting up and managing a pediatric outpatient clinic with an organisation called Mercy Ships. After a year at home, she returned to Sierra Leone to volunteer as medical coordinator with the Welbodi Partnership, a UK-based charity supporting the only government-run children\u2019s hospital in a country where 1 in 5 children do not reach the age of five.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was two years old my parents moved onboard the M\/V Anastasis, a hospital ship run by the organisation Mercy Ships, which provided relief and medical services to communities [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2010\/07\/21\/sandra-lako-an-introduction\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1718],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sandra-lako"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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