Myhand Sailing Outreach Program Fiji
2005- current.
By Emilie Myers, Dr Stuart Myers, Henry Myers (16), Anna Myers (14)
Orthopaedic Outreach is an Australian registered charity providing orthopaedic education and clinical assistance throughout the Pacific and to Southeast Asia. My husband Stuart, hand surgeon and I, Emilie, hand physiotherapist have been volunteering with orthopaedic outreach since 2005. We initially travelled twice a year to Lautoka hospital from 2005 to 2012. Subsequently we have been working annually and to date have completed over 21 volunteer trips to Fiji. Our work has predominantly being based at Lautoka hospital as well as Ba and CWM in Suva.
I personally organise all aspects of the Orthopaedic outreach trips, collating documenting and distributing medical/ library/ sailing donations, organising clinic and operative patients, facilitating our teams local medical registrations.
I also plan and book all of our teams teaching sessions within the hospital and university. I have pre and post trip debriefs with the hospital Medical Superintendent as well as the Head of the FNU Physiotherapy department.
Each visit we bring a large volunteer hand surgery team: Hand Surgeons, Australian orthopaedic trainee registrars, Anaesthetists, theatre and clinical nurses, medical students, physiotherapists, and physiotherapy students as well as an ultrasonographer.
Our team is typically about 14 strong. Our children, Henry and Anna ,have accompanied us since they were only a few weeks old. From a young age they attended Lautoka central primary school. Later, once they both learned how to sail in Sydney they were able to provide their own volunteer assistance to Vuda Marina and Fiji yachting. Both children also organised donated Sydney library books to be offered to Fijian schools, and also to provide hospital lending libraries at Lautoka , Rakiraki and Ba hospital. We have also been lucky enough to have Sydney patients ship over donated boats: Optimists, Pacers and Lasers as well as Windsurfers from Sydney to Fiji Yaaching at Vuda Marina.
Since 2017 both children run a volunteer learn to sail and learn to windsurf programme at Vuda Marina and in Suva alongside our volunteer week. We had great success this year in Suva with this system of hospital and sailing volunteer working successfully.
It is our intention to continue to volunteer in Fiji over the next decade. We have made tremendous local friendships with Fijian orthopaedic surgeons and trainees as well as nurses and other local Physiotherapy health staff. Each trip we bring an enormous amount of donated surgical equipment as well as any donated sailing equipment for the local optimist dinghy fleet and we have access to an enormous amount of donated library books from Woollahra library in Sydney.
It is incredibly difficult for us to get our donations into Fiji by freight as it is expensive and we incur duty. We have now reverted to simply bringing as many donations in our personal luggage every trip. In former times we had the assistance from Fiji Airways to provide us with extra air freight however we now obliged it to travel in the school holiday period as both of our children are nearing the end of their school time this makes the airfares more expensive and the freight less available.
It would make the visits more rewarding if we could have assistance transporting our donated medical, library book and sailing equipment. I understand that to transport items they need to be received by a registered charity. On our previous visit we made connections with Vunilagi book club and I have now contacted Selfless Fiji also another NGO to see if we can get an end to end point particularly for the library books in Sydney. Woollahra library has pristine books which are turned over every three to four months. I personally go through the books to ensure that the content is appropriate for the Fijian population. It would be very rewarding if we could fully equip more Fijian libraries.
2024 will be our 20th year volunteering as a family in Fiji. Every visit we provide detailed documentation for orthopaedic outreach as we treat local cases ,as well as provide specific clinical training for local staff. I am also heavily involved with FNU university teaching the local physiotherapists appropriate techniques to manage orthopaedic fractures such as plaster of Paris applications. Our surgeons will be providing more skin suturing, tendon suturing as well as microsurgery practical sessions for the local CWM staff in 2024.
Throughout the year we continue to communicate with our Fijian colleagues with telehealth and ongoing zoom case reviews. Being associated with FNU provides us with a much larger pool to assist but also to learn from. These trips provide us with an enormous amount of compassion for our Fijian colleagues who are often working in less than optimal conditions with minimal equipment.
We are not the only orthopaedic outreach team providing volunteer assistance to Fiji.
We have only recently moved from Lautoka due to the privatisation of the hospital with Aspen which precluded our charitable work.
CWM also received three other Australian volunteer orthopaedic surgeons in 2023 as well as a volunteer surgeon to Labasa Hospital.
I return in April 2024 with both Henry and Anna to run their Learn to Sail and windsurf voluntary weekend at Vuda Marina. We then come across to Suva with our entire Orthopaedic Outreach Myhand Myers Hand Surgery team and we will be based at CWM & FNU whilst the Henry and Anna continue their volunteer sailing project out of the Suva national sailing centre.
Further information:
www.myhand.com.au
www.orthoreach.org.au