How the Partnership with Cameroon Started

Martha and Hans Aas, and Glen and Mary Holt, with the area's Lamido, the Muslim religious leader. The leader’s grandfather donated the land where the Cameroon medical facility now stands to a Christian missionary group.

 

Martha Aas' three-month volunteer trip to Cameroon in 1997 started a partnership that is now transforming the area. Her husband, Hans, visited her mid tour and saw the mess. Together, they decided to do something about it. Martha, a retired Neonatologist, and Hans, a Gastroenterologist, found a powerful partner in Martha’s former employer — SMDC Health System.

Martha and Hans created an educational exchange program, presented the idea to the leaders of SMDC Health System, and got their first three-year grant in 1999. Since then, nurses, doctors, and administrators from SMDC have given time, dollars and equipment to renew the health system in Cameroon.

A New Vision

In 1999, because local Cameroon tradition demands that “chiefs talk to chiefs,” Dr. Peter Person, CEO of the SMDC Health System, Sister Kathleen Hofer and others traveled to Cameroon to see their doctors, patients and facilities. Moved by what they saw, they began the Healthcare Exchange program.

Others also shared the vision. Area Rotary Clubs and Rotary International funded the construction of a new burn center and intensive care unit in 2001. The emergency room once had no electricity, only windows for light. Today physicians and staff work in a new, well-equipped emergency room.

Turning the Tide

Because of the administrative and medical training that SMDC has helped with, Cameroonian staff can now train other medical centers. And the administrators in Cameroon have developed a five-year plan to expand the facility and bring more services. The project will create or renovate an additional 115,000 square feet, and will cost only 15 percent of what it would cost in the U.S.

Your giving makes a huge impact in Cameroon. Please consider giving to help the people there.