Local physicians donate their medical expertise in humanitarian missions abroad, serving those in need and rejuvenating themselves in the process.

"I get a lump in my throat all the time when I tell this story," says Sudeep Kukreja, MD, a neonatologist at Children's Hospital of Orange County and a UCLA assistant professor of pediatrics, recalling his most memorable experience as a medical volunteer with Operation Smile, treating disadvantaged patients in a foreign country.

In the large coastal city of Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil, Dr. Kukreja and colleagues watched as about 1,800 mothers, fathers and children from the surrounding area learned who would undergo cleft palate surgery the next day, from a list posted outside the hospital. "They're waiting to see their child's name on that list," recounts Dr. Kukreja. "When they see their name, there are people who are just screaming with joy, tears in their eyes. And there are people who are crying--again tears in their eyes--because their kid's name is not there."

As Dr. Kukreja stood watching the scene play out, a young woman approached him from out of the crowd to thank him through a Portuguese-speaking interpreter. She had just seen her 5-year-old son's name on the list of patients who the medical team felt were strong enough to take anesthesia. The boy was slated for surgery to correct his cleft lip and palate on the very next day. In a cracking voice, Dr. Kukreja recalls the woman's next words: "We traveled 300 miles. From the same village, there's a girl with me who is 16 years old. She does not have any friends, because of her facial deformity, because of the cleft lip and cleft palate. Nobody wants to talk to her; nobody wants to be friends with her. And probably, she will never get married because of her facial deformity."
The girl's name was not on the list. "What if I take my son's name off the list," offered the woman, "can you do surgery for her?"

"I said, 'Lady, God bless you,' and this really brought my heart to the bottom--to my boots, really," Dr. Kukreja says. "And guess what? We call it 'God,' that's where the 'God' was. [The girl's] name was wrongly spelled there. And she also had the surgery done."

The heartrending and poignant aspects of volunteering one's medical services outside the United States don't deter physicians--they actually attract participants. Those who go abroad to give first-world medical care want to help people who might otherwise never receive treatment. These medical volunteers treasure their experiences and even find the intense labor refreshing. Dr. Kukreja, for example, apparently cannot get enough. After more than a dozen expeditions with the organizations Operation Smile, the International Relief Team and Project Vietnam, he created his own such group, called Arpan Global Charities, three years ago.

According to the medical volunteers themselves--sometimes called "medical missionaries"--they are motivated by reasons both altruistic and selfish, but above all they want to help. And in the process, some feel they become better doctors as they experience the essence of the profession.

The impact medical volunteers have upon the public health in foreign lands is surprisingly difficult to quantify, but it's clear that they make a difference in the individual lives of people who might not have anyone else to turn to.

Remembering Others
"I'm from Burma--Myanmar--which is considered one of the poorest countries now, with 50 million people. It's very depressed, very oppressed," says Aisha Simjee, MD. An ophthalmologist based in Orange, Dr. Simjee recently returned from an October medical mission to Colombia with CHOC colleague Dr. Kukreja and his group, Arpan Global Charities. "I left [Myanmar] 37 years ago, and I thought, 'As soon as I stand on my feet and I have enough resources to go out of the country and do it ... I will.' That time arrived in 1991," she explains.

For many doctors who managed to escape deprivation, medical volunteerism offers a way to throw a lifeline to people who weren't so lucky. "I was able to get out of the country; I was able to come to America; I was blessed to go into a field that I wanted to go [into]," Dr. Simjee says. "I have everything I need: a house; a car; three meals a day. I don't need anything more than what I have, so I have to find time to go out and help."

After more than 16 years of medical volunteerism, Dr. Simjee has visited 21 countries, including El Salvador, Ethiopia and Afghanistan, and she has stories to tell about each of them. "There's something memorable about every country I've been to," she says. For example, traveling with Roger Ohanesian, MD, and the Armenian EyeCare Project, Dr. Simjee was stopped in the airport of Yerevan, the capital city, by customs agents who were suspicious of her box of frozen corneas. "They said, 'We'll let you have it in two to three days,'" she recalls. "I said, 'No way--I'm running out of my dry-ice time, and I must take it with me.' They were confused, so they left the box outside the customs [office], and all the officers went in for a meeting to see what to do with me. So I took the box and I left!"

Vien Doan, DO, a family practitioner in Riverside, offers similar motivations. Born and reared in Vietnam, he came to the United States at 16 years old after the end of the war. "I felt very lonely and lost, then I found a direction for my life," Dr. Doan says. "When I began college in 1977, I thought that if I were to go back to Vietnam one day to help take care of the people I left behind, that would also give them the peace that I got when I was here," he says. "I felt that although I didn't deserve it, I got a much better life than the people who I left behind."

So, when an influx of Vietnamese immigrants came to Orange County, he helped found Nhan Hoa Clinic in Garden Grove, and served there until 1994. By 2000, he had put together a team of four volunteers for his first medical mission to Vietnam under his group, the Good Samaritan Medical Ministry. Two teams now go to Vietnam every year, a team of about 70 primary care doctors and a separate team of specialists. Since 2005, his teams have trained local doctors at Hue Medical College in Imperial City in emergency medicine, and now aim to start a residency program.