MAR-B-8
MY LETTER TO MAP, THANKING THEM FOR THEIR LIFE-SAVING DRUGS INCLUDED IN THE MAP PACKS I HAD INTENDED TO CARRY TO NEPAL,
BUT
WERE DIVERTED BY 9/11 TO MALAWI
Thank you so very much!
You would never know from
half a world away what the MAP Packs have done in literally saving lives and
relieving much suffering. So, I have
carefully recorded many of these instances and have taken quite a number of
pictures that may be useful to you in illustrating the sites at which your
donations have been used.
I had just returned from a
return trip to Mindanao, Philippines, and had sent forward a single roll of
film and a description of the events there as I stopped long enough to pick up
the MAP packs on my way to Africa.
Last fall, you had entrusted
to me two MAP packs for a repeat medical mission in Nepal. I had checked them in, and was standing at
the gate to board my flight in DCA, when I looked up and eye witnessed the
impact of the 757 American Airliner into the Pentagon. As we were evacuated form the airport, I
took pictures of this event and its aftermath, and made efforts to retrieve the
precious packs for later use.
The later use, seems to have
been carefully and specifically hand-selected for the drugs that I
carried. No on could have anticipated that
I would be needing exactly what was in those packs, as I stood within a group
of children with meningitis resistant to the available treatment and just
happened to have ceftriaxone, which salvaged twenty of these doomed children. I did not even know why I was carrying the
antifungal, until the man who came in with seizures based in AIDS had the LP
and the India Ink Preparation that showed the cryptococcal meningitis--for
which this remote mission station in Embangweni Malawi was certainly the only
place in the country, and perhaps in all of Southern Africa to have available
the specific treatment he needed. It
was no prescience on my part that furnished these drugs just when and where
they were most needed!
I am now headed out to a
return to the postponed Nepal Medical Mission (see "A World of
Wonders..." for the list of a dozen itineraries of the year in remote
medical missions) and will once again rely upon the MAP packs for the relief
they have again turned up nearly miraculously to provide.
I have recorded many of the
events in my "notes" from Malawi, attached, and I should shortly
receive a deluge of a photographic feast from this experience. Some of these may be useful to you as you
pursue your operations.
Representing the poorest of
this world's populations as they struggle with the human condition and now have
the extra burden of the AIDS pandemic, I want to say "Thank You" for
your invaluable support.
Yours truly,
Glenn W. Geelhoed