Miss Lydia, motivated and empowered.... inspiring others

Lydia continues to make great progress. Her night braces are giving a greater angle between her forearm and hand. With this she is gaining greater control in flight in the CH701.

Here she is practicing her circuit work. It is amazing the difference flying has made to her life - the motivational effect, the need to communicate and the essential need to learn to work with her unique geometry (although we still tends to climb when turning right!).

At Oshkosh this year Lydia met a retired 747 lady pilot, barely taller than her,who told Lydia about the number of cushions she needed to use to fly the heavy metal! That gave Lydia more confidence in the use of cushions in the cockpit!

Also at Oshkosh, she enjoyed spending time with Jessica Cox (the no-arm pilot and wonder-motivational-speaker) as well as meeting other disabled pilots boosted her confidence.

To those who supported this life changing trip for Lydia, we extend our heartfelt thanks.

Lydia will be doing her duties in the mini-clinic soon, sharing her story with others who come into our facilities in need of the most simple yet effective health education and wound management that many people around the world simply take for granted.

Lydia is an inspiration to us all, but most of all she inspires the parents of others to take better care of wounds similar to those of her legacy, and to prevent others suffering as she has and will for the rest of her life.

Miss Lydia .. Healthcare educator

Submitted by Rachelle Milam

One of the best parts of the training this past Friday was watching the AvTech girls step up and take a part in teaching and demonstrating first aid techniques to the communities. Juliet assisted Michaela to talk about how to treat a burn, Emanuella assisted a visiting nurse to give a demonstration of stabalizing a fractured limb, and Lydia assisted Audrey, one of our long term volunteers, with showing how to treat a wound. They all did an amazing job and worked very hard with the rest of us to make Friday a success. The greatest impact, however, came when Lydia stood in front of the community reps and Queen Mothers and told the story of how her arm was disfigured. She explained that when she was very young, she'd been bitten by an insect. Because her parents had no knowledge of first aid, they relied on traditional healing methods, like mixing herbs and applying them to the wound. Sadly, because of these methods, her arm became infected and ended up becoming disfigured. While the communities were interested in all the demonstrations, it was easy to see that Lydia's story was what they really connected with. They related to it because they all had children who'd been hurt. It drove home how important these steps could be, because it's not a matter of loving their child or wanting to see them well; it's about being aware of the necessary steps to make sure that their child will be effectively treated if something happens. Lydia did such a wonderful job, and we hope that her story inspired the people to learn ways to prevent such a tragedy occuring with their own families.

Field maintenance is just part of the job...

Rain is a funny thing here. Usually you get nothing for days, weeks, even months on end and then you get inches of rain in a matter of hours, with run-off and flooding, then within hours the ground is rock hard once again. This week we had a rare rain, in that it rained for nearly FIVE hours non-stop. At times heavily, at times mildly, it never drizzled - not once... Result: Mud Bath. Wet houses (rain comes through the louvre windows with the wind), wet workshops, wet everywhere... wet and muddy. Cars and people got stuck walking on the usually solid three km (nearly 2 miles) of mud tracks that are our transport routes at the site. It rendered the manoeuvring and runway areas totally un-walkable even.

It has been on the 'to do' list for a long time, so, the next few days became 'shovel stones' to key areas. We added stone stands for the cars to enable ingress and egress of the vehicles without slipping over and tried to patch the 'sink-holes' that eat the cars when they get sticky. All hands went on deck, and Lydia demonstrated that she can now handle a shovel as well as any other!

We would need about 30 truck loads of stones at over $400 each, then a grader at a few thousands of dollars to do a proper job on the tracks; so that is not going to happen, as it is a very low priority, very low in the scheme of things! We have coped for 6 years, we can cope for another 20, after all, this is what our communities have dealt with for centuries (granted, they don't have a car to get stuck in the mud)!

Our priority is to change lives, and that is where all of our funds are focused - others, not us. If that means that we have to put up with a muddy road, dig the odd car out and struggle for a few days here and there, so be it. We are only working on the areas needed for immediate safety, prevention of damage to assets and for the improvement in efficiency so that we can be more effective with everything we do.


Well done Lydia, well done all the ladies and an especially well done to Lele (the tall chap in a red T shirt) who is now our mowing and sorting out roads chappy!

Learning to fly with a broken wing

Medicine on the Move does some things in a very different way.  One of those ways is 'dropping-in' health education to communities - by air.  One young person who would probably not be disabled today if only suitable health education and awareness had been around when she was three years old, is Lydia Wetsi (read her story here).

Lydia, however, has literally risen above her disability and is now training as a pilot.engineer - even with the challenges of her disabled arm.  Here, you can see her practising circuits, that is take-off, climb, cruise, descent, land and repeat, and repeat, and repeat until tired!

As her instructor, under the AvTech programme, I am proud to be a part of the sustainable change that Medicine on the Move has instigated.  Changing lives, one flight at a time, in more ways than we can possibly imagine...

 

Help fund the training of a Pilot/Engineer with MoM here.

 

Let the Drops begin!!

We are all very excited about our first full fledged health education drop run. After 18 years of working to get the approvals and change regulations we’ll finally be taking healthcare to rural villages.

The ground Team: Michaela, Ben, Rex and Melissa have gone to a rural community to monitor the in-community reactions to the first set of drops. They will arrive there later this afternoon and spend a night in the village ready to share and document the first drop tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile the volunteer pilot, Patricia Mawuli and her student and co pilot Lydia Wetsi, are preparing the aircraft, bags, and materials for the drop.

Tomorrows run will be to 20 rural villages earlier identified by the queen mothers as target communities. The first contact materials being prepared include an introduction, a small questionnaire and some telephone credit for the community health rep to call us.

We’re often asked why we wish to use small aircraft for these runs. The ground team, traveling by road, will spend around 3 hours getting to first drop site. By comparison total flight time for this initial run to all 20 communities will take just over one hour in our Rotax powered CH701. Attempting this trip would require more than a week difficult travel by road, and would still not reach all 20 communities.

These first drops are more about first contact and relationship building. Future drops will contain more community specific health education materials and training invitations.