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Monday, December 6, 2010

Papua New Guinea : Cairns doctor's duty on PNG cholera frontline

Via Cairns :

" A CAIRNS doctor worked by torchlight, just a few kilometres from Australia's border, to help prevent a cholera outbreak worsening and spreading.

GP Dr Anthony Mahler, who works part-time at the Cairns Cosmetic Clinic, has returned from a week-long humanitarian mission to Papua New Guinea helping treat patients in remote parts of PNG afflicted by the country's cholera outbreak.

Australia's border in the Torres Strait has been sealed with fears more than 100 PNG people may have died from the disease. The outbreak, which began in the country in July 2009, has infected at least 5000 people.

Hundreds of sick locals are currently being treated at the overflowing Daru Hospital, and other makeshift facilities.

The mission, organised and funded through the Church of Latter-Day Saints, involved Dr Mahler and Brisbane GP David Williams, alongside Cairns-based church organiser Shane Palmer, heading to the island of Daru and the nearby Fly River delta to provide immediate care for patients suffering from the disease.

In one remote village near the Bamu River, doctors and medical staff treated 185 patients in one night, working under torchlight in a makeshift hospital."

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