MEDICAL MISSIONARIES IN BORNEO

I happened to read a news article published in the Borneo Post of Tuesday, 5 January 2010 regarding American Missionary, Lorraine Gribbens who passed away in Asheville, USA on 30 December 2009. She was born in Chicago and had a degree in Pharmacy in 1953. In 1958, she volunteered to work in a small remote hospital in the virgin jungles in the centre of Borneo. It is a place called Kapit in the State of Sarawak, Borneo. She worked there for 18 years and when I was posted to work in the same hospital in January 1983, the hospital was still named Christ Hospital. It was set up by the Methodist Church from USA and all the wards were still named after the apostles of Jesus. The Malaysian Government Ministry of Health has just taken over the hospital although the Methodist Church still runs Chempro, Community Health Motivation Programme.

The system of healthcare carried on by the Ministry of Health was still essentially the same except that it became “Malaysianised”. I remember that the staff nurses only collected a nominal fee when the patient was discharged. The hospital built simple facilities (mainly for safe cooking and hygiene) for the relatives to live around the hospital. The pictures of the apostles had since disappeared and there were no open prayers before we began any operation. I do often say a prayer and indeed I had to pray very hard during my first week. I had just done an emergency Caesarean section for a young lady and the uterus would not stop bleeding as she had an adherent placenta or placenta accreta. In desperation, I had to remove the placenta and the uterus to stop the bleeding; that was the first time I did such a major operation.

We stayed in simple houses provided near the hospital. They were plenty of fish in the nearby river and I could easily purchase them every evening from the fishermen for a dollar or two. The soil around my accommodation were fertile as I could easily plant all kinds of vegetables throughout the year. There were so many patients, especially sick babies and infectious diseases to take care of that I had little time to think of the loved ones that we left behind and going to Kapit alone.

After completing the compulsory service, I was then transferred back to the government hospitals in Kuching and Kuala Lumpur. I had never been back to Kapit since but I understand that the medical infrastructure has expanded and the fish have vanished from the nearby rivers.

By Dr Clarence Lei Chang Moh, clarencelei@gmail.com
8^th January 2010