Dr. Alpert arrived in Amman, Jordan at the end of April ready to go. His destination would be Baghdad, and he knew that the three weeks of time he had set aside from his private practice in San Francisco to volunteer with International Medical Corps might not be enough to accomplish everything he had in mind. So it made sense that his first question after arriving at the airport was, “When are we going in?”
The answer, of course, was as soon as possible but staff security remained a tremendous concern with reports of sporadic shooting at night in Baghdad and criminal activity along highway ten, the route connecting Amman with Iraq’s capital city. It would be several days before a road convoy would take Dr. Alpert and other International Medical Corps staff into the country, an unforeseen delay.
And what was Dr. Alpert’s response to this? “It’s just like mountaineering.” This was a phrase that he used over and over again during his three-week stay. And even though the flat desert landscape of Iraq is in sharp contrast to the steep inclines of a mountain range, it made no difference. It is the inability to truly know the details of what lies ahead –flexibility is key. Or as Dr. Alpert would say, “Forget plan A, start with plan B and go from there.”
Mountaineering aside, Dr. Alpert was able to accomplish a great deal during his time in Baghdad. His focus was twofold: meet the acute needs of the health system at the local level and begin the process of re-integrating the Iraqi medical community with their counterparts in America and throughout the world.
The first task involved making in-depth assessments of the local hospitals in Baghdad. How were the doctors coping? Had their facilities been looted during the war? What equipment and medications were most critical for saving the lives of the patients visiting the hospital? What might be the specific training needs? And finally, what might International Medical Corps do to help?
In order to be most effective, Dr. Alpert focused the majority of his energy on two city hospitals: Al Karama, a general hospital which serves the needs of under-privileged Iraqis and also has a resident program; and Al Wasati, a specialty hospital for reconstructive surgery and orthopedics.
Al Wasati was of particular interest to Dr. Alpert since plastic and reconstructive surgery is his specialty. It was at this hospital that he not only did assessments and delivered supplies, but also assisted the local doctors in operating on several emergency cases. These included doing a skin graft on a patient who had suffered an electrical burn, and rehabilitating the arm of a man who had received a gunshot wound. He had also planned to operate on a young boy whose hand had been mangled from picking up a UXO but the boy did not show up for his scheduled surgery, a sign of the chaotic nature of post-war Iraq.
At Al Karama, Dr. Alpert met with Dr. Quraish Al Kasser, the top surgeon in Iraq and the President of the Iraqi Society of Surgeons. The two of them worked together to lay the groundwork for what might prove to be a major effort to re-integrate the Iraqi medical community with the rest of the world. Due to the sanctions, Iraqi doctors have not been able to travel beyond their borders for twelve years. Although the doctors in Iraq are known to be well trained, there is a lot to be gained from sharing information with physicians from other countries.
The first practical step in making this happen was arranging discussions between Dr. Quraish and his counterpart in the United States – Dr. Tom Russell, the Executive Director of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Alpert did this by bringing a satellite phone to Al Karama hospital early one morning. With the time change, they caught Dr. Russell at midnight in the States, but it made no difference who was ending his day and who was beginning it, an Iraqi surgeon was talking to an American one and instantaneously, the collaborative spirit came alive.
Dr. Alpert will continue to advocate on behalf of the Iraqi medical community once he is settled back in at home in the Bay Area. He has made the initial connection in terms of International Medical Corps’ re-integration initiative, in addition to touching many patients’ lives during his volunteer tenure in Iraq. As he sees it, no matter where you are in the world, the fundamental elements in any health care system remain constant: the patient and the doctor. Fortunately, International Medical Corps has committed and visionary doctors like Bud Alpert who offer their time and energy to ensure that patients can be served the world over.