November 19, 2007   •   VOL. 45, NO. 20   •   Oakland, CA

A medical team from Antioch delivers
supplies and care to patients in Vietnam
 

Dominican Father Francis-Hung Quang Le, parochial vicar at Holy Rosary Parish in Antioch, poses with a young boy living at the Daughters of St. Paul orphanage for special needs children in Hue.

By Sharon Abercrombie
Staff writer

Photos by Jeffrey Lowy and Thai Tran

Got medicine? If those extra bottles of vitamins and analgesics cluttering your kitchen cabinet shelves are still up to date, Dominican Father Francis Le, parochial vicar at Most Holy Rosary Parish in Antioch, will gladly take them off your hands. You will not be sorry.
He will see that they reach Dr. Thanh Tinh Le, his physician sister in Central Vietnam. Without Father Francis’ help, Dr. Le’s undernourished sick patients would have to go without these common medicines.

For the past several years, Father Francis, a former Vietnamese boat person who spent his teen years in Santa Barbara, has been transporting not only vitamins and pain killers, but also blood pressure cuffs, diabetes and high blood pressure medicine, bandages and other medical supplies to his sister, as well as to other clinics and orphanages needing help.

Last year, the priest put together a team of helpers and healers to accompany him on his trips –some from the Antioch parish as well as a former parishioner, plus individuals who heard about his project and volunteered to help. They now number 14 and include a family physician, a gastroenterologist, an intern, an anesthesiologist, a nurse practitioner, several nurses, a translator, a CPA, Father Francis and some assistants.
 

Dr. Randolph Clarke, an Antioch family physician and a Holy Rosary parishioner, examines a patient.
If you want to help Those interested in giving either medicine or cash to the Holy Rosary International Medical Mission can send donations to: Father Francis Le, OP 1313 A Street, Antioch, CA 94509 www.hrimm.org

Together they comprise the Holy Rosary International Medical Mission, a new non-profit outreach which delivers free medical care and services to the poor and sick in third world countries.

This past May, they completed their second trip to Vietnam and plan to return in May 2008. Other trips are scheduled for Mexicali on the Mexican border with California next month and the Philippines in May 2008. All volunteers pay their own expenses, which cost each person an average of $2,500 for transportation and housing. Trips usually last 14 days.

Seeds sown in Mexico
The seeds for Father Francis’ medical mission were sown in 1999 while he was studying in Mexico and became acquainted with a group called Dominicans for the Poor. Its members were planning to deliver medicine to a free clinic in Lima, Peru.
Inspired by their work, Father Francis offered to help them transport the supplies. Their destination was no ordinary clinic. This one operates in what was once St. Martin De Porres’ birthplace and family home. Martin de Porres, a fellow Dominican (1579-1639), was renowned for his healing gifts.

The notion of having service projects located in a private residence was a familiar one to Father Francis. His father, a teacher, used to conduct free classes in the family’s living room after the communists took over South Vietnam in 1975 and wouldn’t let him teach in schools, explained Father Francis. The family tradition has continued; Dr. Le uses part of her living room as a clinic.

During a visit to the Nguyet Bieut orphanage, Roger Hopper and Aileen Hayes, both nurses, remove accumulated fragments from a child’s ear that had caused her to be deaf. When the procedure was complete, she was able to hear normally. The orphanage is operated by the Lovers of the Holy Cross.

When Father Francis told his sister about the Dominican Lima project, she thought it could work in Vietnam, too. So on subsequent trips home for the next three years, the priest schlepped 140 pounds of medicines and supplies not only for his sister, but also for Kim Long Charity Clinic, a facility that serves 250 patients per day. The clinic is run by the Sisters of the Congregation of Daughters of Mary Immaculate in Hue, the Sisters who taught him in kindergarten.

The supplies come from three sources — Holy Rosary parishioners who donate medicines and cash; doctors who provide samples given them by sales representatives of pharmaceutical companies; and the Catholic Medical Mission Board, Blessings International and Medical Assistance Programs. “These are all non-profits that exist to provide medications to mission groups like ours,” said Aileen Hayes, an emergency room nurse at Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, a Holy Rosary parishioner and one of the mission volunteers.

Health care system not doing well
Hayes accompanied Father Francis on both his 2006 and 2007 trips. Health care has not done well under the Communist regime, she said. “Some non-profit organizations call it a 6-3-1 system,” she explained. The government gets 60 percent of the medical resources, officials and embassy-type people get 30 per cent, and the average person gets 10 percent.” Hayes believes that the 10 percent figure “may be stretching it.”

Angie Verdun, volunteer financial administrator for the Holy Rosary International Medical Mission, holds a child living at the Nuoc Ngot orphanage run by the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Medical care is not free and the average wage in Vietnam is two dollars a day. Father Francis explained that malnutrition, drinking untreated water, and poor hygiene are common causes for many illnesses, infections, and poor health.
Medical people there are closed mouthed about their system, and are loathe to criticize it, said Dr. Randolph Clarke, an Antioch family physician and a Holy Rosary parishioner.

According to Dr. Clarke, who made the trip last May with his wife, Kathleen, a nurse, the quality of physicians is good, “but their hands were often tied due to lack of access to meds and modern facilities.” Medical personnel were dedicated and were doing their best in difficult circumstances, he said.

Conditions treated by the team included malnutrition, parasites, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis, and leprosy.

At one leper colony, the adults were shy about approaching the volunteers because of embarrassment and fear of rejection, explained Aileen Hayes. “Reaching out to a shoulder or a hand was difficult for us, but once we started, it was difficult to stop. A couple of the women reached out to clasp their hands around mine and bow in a traditional gesture of thanks. They trusted me not to pull away from them and I was absolutely humbled by the experience.”

Dr. Liberacion Albinda, director of the medical mission team, examines a patient at a women’s shelter in Nguyet Bieut.

The need for a backscratcher
Hayes said that one woman gave the team an idea about what to bring on their next visit. “She had made a simple gesture indicating that she could no longer scratch herself with her fingerless hands. Next year, we hope to bring backscratchers for them, as it appears they will be able to clasp the handles between their palms.”

One day, the team visited a village filled with patients who were underfed, overworked laborers, said Hayes. “I was able to encircle the upper arm of an elderly woman with my thumb.” But telling a patient to eat more protein seemed futile, Hayes said, because “they have no choice in the diet of rice and vegetables.” Anemia is rampant. Hayes said she gave “B12 shots like crazy.”

Dr. Clarke said his best memory of the 14-day trip was a visit to an orphanage run by nuns. “They provided such a loving environment for the children.” Dr. Clarke said he will never forget “seeing patients at the orphanage, lined up around the block to see us, appreciative of whatever attention and treatment we were able to provide.”

Dr. Than-Tinh Le examines an elderly patient in the clinic she’s set up in her living room in central Vietnam.

For Dr. Clarke and his cohorts, the biggest downside was when the government “forbade us to return to the clinic where we were working, forcing us to travel into the rural areas to see patients,” he reported. “I was not told why this occurred, but we were definitely being watched by the authorities. They apparently did not appreciate our presence outside the medical center.”

Dominican Sister, a nurse,
helps one desperate young
woman get care in San Jose

By Sharon Abercrombie
Staff writer

Mission San Jose Dominican Sister Linh Dao, a registered nurse, thought she had seen just about everything during the first 10 days of her two-week stint with the Holy Rosary International Medical Mission in Vietnam last May. The nun had visited a hospital for active lepers, an orphanage for children, and a home for paraplegic men. The orphanage and the home’s residents were both scrabbling for food, clothing, vitamins, soap and toothbrushes.

She had seen amputees getting around the best they could by wrapping plastic tires around what was left of their legs. Some simply walked on their hands.
She and her mission colleagues had visited a home for unwed mothers. The birthing room was “an open windowed depressing affair with a tortuous looking bed that had seen better days — like 50 years ago,” said fellow nurse Aileen Hayes. On the other side of the wall, “and still very much a part of the inside of the house, was a large chicken coop with the accompanying smells and noises.”
Then one day, while Sister Dao, Aileen Hayes and the rest of the medical mission team were working in a village clinic, a man walked in with his 20-year-old daughter. “Can you help her?” he asked desperately.

Mission San Jose Dominican Sister Linh Dao, a nurse, takes the blood pressure of a woman who came to the Kim Long Clinic in Hue.

When Sister Dao asked what was wrong, the girl removed the baseball cap she was wearing. Underneath it, her head was covered by a piece of toilet paper. It was shielding a large, purple gelatinous, disfiguring but nonmalignant tumor. The condition is rare, but when it strikes, Vietnamese people are its solo targets, said Sister Dao.

“I didn’t want to give them false hope, so I just said that I would do my best.”
When she returned to San Jose, she contacted medical personnel and board members at O’Connor Hospital where she works as a medical-surgical nurse. It took several months to pull it all together, but this past September the young tumor patient arrived to begin tests for her surgery at O’Connor.

Currently she is undergoing a series of skin grafts that are needed before the surgery can take place. Doctors also want the tiny woman to gain a bit of weight. When Sister Dao first saw her in Vietnam, she only weighed 80 pounds
Like Dominican Father Francis Le, founder of the International Medical Mission and parochial vicar at Holy Rosary Parish in Antioch, Sister Linh Dao is a refugee from Vietnam. Both share a compassionate need to help those who were left behind when the Communists took over in 1975.

Father Francis came to the U.S. in 1977 and spent his teenage years in Santa Barbara. He received computer engineering degrees at two California universities and worked as a hardware engineer to support those members of his family who remained in Vietnam. He joined the Dominicans in 1996 and was ordained in 2004.

Sister Dao, her three siblings and parents left Saigon in 1981 and eventually settled in San Jose. The family was Buddhist, but the children had attended a French Catholic convent school in Saigon. They converted to Catholicism as a group in 1984. When Sister Dao was attending Ohlone College in Fremont, she noticed a Catholic convent nearby. She decided to drop by for a visit. That convent was the Motherhouse of the Mission San Jose Dominican Sisters. She joined the order five years ago.

Her community of Sisters paid for her trip to Vietnam last year as part of the Medical Mission team.

Sister Dao hopes to join the mission group again in May as a combination nurse/translator. The tug to help her people is stronger than ever. During a visit to Vietnam in 1999, she was saddened to see how poor the people were “but today they are much poorer,” she said. She wanted to volunteer as a nurse then, but the communists wouldn’t let her. This time they were more open, she said, “but they followed us everywhere.”

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