Seed training vision
In fact, the vision for the seed training program came from the experiences of the Taiwan support team for the NCF’s founder, Dr. Samuel Noordhoff.
When Noordhoff came to Taiwan in 1959, MacKay Memorial Hospital was in crisis due to a shortage of skilled personnel. As superintendent, Noordhoff sent doctors in specialisms such as cardiology and nephrology to the USA for training, and the skills and knowledge they brought back raised the standard of medical care in Taiwan. For Noordhoff himself, as a general surgeon, complex craniofacial surgery was a great challenge, so he too went back to the US for two years of advanced training.
Noordhoff became the first superintendent of CGMH in 1979, and at the time he had great ambitions, hoping to turn Taiwan into a world leader in plastic surgery. He and his star students Wei Fu-chan and Chen Yu-ray were named Maliniac Lecturers, the highest honor of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, while Chang Gung’s Linkou branch has become world famous for its reconstructive microsurgery and is a major training center for doctors from around the globe.
Bona Lotha, a doctor from India who is currently training at CGMH, says: “Children in Taiwan with cleft lip or cleft palate are really lucky. The reconstructive skill level of the Chang Gung craniofacial surgery team can give them lips that are even more beautiful and harmoniously shaped than those of ordinary people.” He is very touched by the patience shown to seed doctors by the medical team led by Lo Lun-jou, chairman of the Department of Surgery, as well as their willingness to unreservedly share their most advanced reconstructive techniques for cleft lip and cleft palate.
Dr. Lotha worked as a surgeon in Yemen for 17 years, so he is already very experienced. In 2003 he founded the organization Yemen Smile to provide free treatment to people with cleft lip or cleft palate throughout the country. However, civil war broke out in Yemen in January of 2015. Sixteen bombs fell close by his clinic, and military forces began a large-scale slaughter in the area. Assisted by the Indian military, he was able to escape to the Republic of Djibouti in East Africa, and has not been able to return to Yemen since.
Because of the impact of the civil war, Lotha faced a low point in his career and even considered giving up medicine to go into business. He says that what he has learned at CGMH has reawoken his initial dream of engaging in healthcare education, and reminded him that his heart “is still in the Arabian Peninsula.”
Dr. Noordhoff, who passed away in 2018, once said, “Defects that can be repaired are no longer defects.” He also said, “I will mend with love those things God did not have time to finish.” In the same spirit, overseas medical assistance spreads the power of Taiwan’s healthcare expertise to countries in need, and that power is without limit.
MacKay Memorial Hospital donated a CT scanner to Kiribati. It was the first CT scanner to work properly in the South Pacific, and local medical practitioners have been trained to operate it. (courtesy of the International Medical Service Center, MMH)
A Filipino youth named John, who received free reconstructive surgery for cleft lip and palate from an overseas mission of the Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation many years ago, has grown up to be a healthy and optimistic young man.
The Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation mends “those things God did not have time to finish” with volunteer clinics and love.
Seed doctor Bona Lotha (right) has learned the latest skills in cleft lip and palate reconstructive surgery from the medical team led by Lo Lun-jou (left), chairman of the Department of Surgery at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
Although the children of Kiribati are lacking in material wealth, they are innately optimistic and active. (courtesy of the International Medical Service Center, MMH)