Rockville Doctor Reflects on Kenya Mission

Although she’s been on four medical mission trips, pediatrician Carol Plotsky says each one is a learning experience.

She continues to re-educate herself on diseases—such as malaria—that American doctors don’t typically see outside of medical school, but that are common in Third World countries. And, she said, it’s amazing what doctors there are able to do given the resources.

Plotsky, whose practice is based in Rockville, was one of six local medical professionals who treated hundreds of patients during a recent mission trip to Kenya. The Rockville team joined 16 other medical professionals from around the country on the mission trip, which was sponsored by the Paul Chester Children's Hope Foundation.

In Kenya, people would line up for miles when they knew the doctors were coming, Plotsky said.

“They do seem to really appreciate us,” she said of the patients. “They’re incredibly nice. They want to see us, and feel that we have something to offer them.”

At a clinic in Narok—a town west of Nairobi—patients were triaged, assigned numbers and lined up according to the type of care needed (such as pediatrics, orthopedics or ophthalmology). Many patients received vitamins, she said. Those needing medicine would receive that as well.

Doctors on the trip also performed surgeries and donated medical supplies and eyeglasses.

Going on a mission trip is incredibly interesting, Plotsky said. But, she said, “It can be frustrating because they don’t have all of the resources to assess or treat that we have here.”

Still, she said, some incredible medicine is practiced. While she was in Kenya, a team of doctors had to perform a Cesarean section on an pregnant woman because the placenta had separated from the mother’s uterus.

In the United States, Plotsky said, the baby would have been given a tube to help with breathing and taken to a neonatal intensive care unit. But at the Kenyan clinic there was no NICU and no way to intubate the baby. It took about 20 minutes to get the baby to really cry, she said.

“They don’t have the resources that we take for granted and it’s really hard,” she said. Plotsky said one neonatal area had 17 babies, only three isolettes (special incubators that provide controlled heat, humidity and oxygen for premature babies), and just one tank of oxygen.

“Here we’re debating the cost of health care, and they don’t have any,” said Plotsky, who’s trying to think of ways old isolettes here can be donated overseas.

Plotsky’s mission trip to Kenya last month and her previous three trips—to Kenya, Ecuador and Colombia—were all through the Paul Chester Children's Hope Foundation. The foundation, formed in 2004, was co-founded by Rockville anesthesiologist Bill Chester in memory of his teenage son.