BOSTON – Wide Horizons for Children, a nonprofit based in Waltham, Massachusetts, is sending the doctors to Ethiopia to provide medical care for children and pregnant women. The first mission went to the impoverished nation in November, according to a news release, with a second mission scheduled for the spring.
The missions are voluntary, and the physicians perform surgeries without charge. The M.D.’s also train Ethiopian physicians and midwives.
The November team was led by Dr. Fletcher R. Wilson, an obstetrics and gynecological doctor and adjunct professor at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Stephan W. Coffman, a surgeon at Monadnock Surgical Associates in Petersborough, N.H., was also on the trip.
The team spent a week at the Adwa Hospital in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region and completed 40 surgeries, including removing goiters, making surgical repairs and performing C-sections. The doctors also performed one life-saving procedure.
Wide Horizons for Children is a nonprofit focused on adoption and child welfare and, since 1974, has placed more than 10,000 children with adoptive parents in the United States.