SHIC

Little Swan is now back at our hospital. We are glad that her surgeries are finished. She presently has a cast on both legs all the way up from toe to thigh. One cast will be removed in about one month, the other will remain on for 3 months. We hope that she will heal up quickly and that we would have nothing less than 100% success from these surgeries.

The second child, Shen Ming Jia, with double cleft lip and cleft palate has been refused for surgery by the anesthesiologist. This child has multiple birth defects and this is why the anesthesiologist feels that the child is high risk. We will keep him in our hospital for a while to make sure that he is stabilized and then we will have to send him back to the orphanage. We are a bit concerned about his continuing in good health if he returns to the orphanage. These kind of children, not only because they look extremely handicapped but also because they are difficult to feed are sometimes neglected, become malnourished. They contract pneumonia easily due to the cleft palate which allows food and drink to enter the lungs if they are not fed properly. It is a painstaking task to feed these special babies.

The wonderful basketball team from Memphis will not be able to join us this year. Since we do not have any basketball teams we will not be able to do the 4-A Friend Sports Health Week in the City of Fushun like we did last year with the Memphis team. We are disappointed about that. The Memphis boys certainly made a wonderful impression with our Chinese counterparts.

However we will have a great group from Brazil, all soccer players. We plan to cooperate with Shenyang high schools and Sports College, to receive the Brazilian soccer team. We will have 13-16 year-olds and 17-21 year-olds. It ought to be a week of excitement, I think it will be great.

There are two groups, both legal entities, who have approached me to ask about the possibility of our helping them to find the funding to build a new club facility. One is, in a remote area, poor and really needs the help. The other is in the city but would be a good investment regarding the growth of the locals.

We are considering having a children’s workers conference in June. In the past we have had many of these and they were very fruitful. Now our hospital partner is also willing to partipate in these by having their doctors participate

We have made out a good plan for follow-up for our village doctors. We will send our staff out in teams to spend some time with them. We have received some medical CDs with great medical teaching, from our Hong Kong partner. This week we will begin the process of getting them approved for continuing medical education credits. We plan to spend one day with our docs in each of their village and township areas. All one day we will review specific medical videos with them, calling our city doctors to answer questions when necessary. In the evening we will continue with character building materials that will feed them richly.

We now have all of the necessary documents from the USA. We will submit all of these to the ministry of Civil Affairs in two provinces this week. We are hoping for favor and expedient approval for the chairs to come in tax free.

MPH