Mission to Africa: physician executive faces Third-World perils bringing first-rate care to Africa - Profile - Biography

Physician Executive, Nov-Dec, 2003 by Monique Fields

IN THIS ARTICLE ...

Learn how an ACPE member copes with the stresses and successes of mission work in Africa, bringing health care, drinkable and community leadership to the poor.

Ephraim Palmero, MD, steered his white Toyota 4x4 toward the military checkpoint outside of Monrovia, Liberia, and waited for the guards to wave him through the gate. His four-year-old son sat in the back seat, while a medical administrator rode shotgun.

Encountering checkpoints in a country, turned war zone is routine for Palmero and a decal affixed to the front of his track guaranteed safe and swift passage. This time, though, the guards asked Palmero to step outside of his truck. The doctor hesitated, and immediately one of the guards lifted an AK 47 and moved it within inches of his ear. "I was really scared," Palmero says.

It was not the first time.

In a separate incident, a militiaman, all of 13 or 14 years old, shoved an automatic rifle into Palmero's face because he thought the doctor should direct his attention to a different triage patient.

Another boy once threatened to kill him after he sutured his gaping wounds. And in another run in with a crazed gunman, a guard hit Palmero's windshield with the butt of an assault rifle for no apparent reason.

Palmero, 35 and a father of two, experienced this treatment after agreeing in 2000 to be the medical director of the Seventh-day Adventist Cooper Hospital in Monrovia.

By the time the guard at the checkpoint had introduced Palmero to his AK-47, the Filipino doctor already had decided Liberia's politics made it far too difficult to practice medicine in the country.

"I was just too nervous." he says. "It was time to get out."

More than a year later, the experience lingered in his mind as more unrest surfaced in Liberia. It reminded him of the time then President Charles Taylor was threatened by rebels in May 2002, forcing Palmero and countless others to flee the country. Palmero and his family went to the Ivory Coast. Later, he decided to go to Gambia, where he is now the country's health care director.

Doctor duties

His current title is far too simple for what amounts to a complex job. He represents the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International, or ADRA, a humanitarian organization established in 1984 by the Seventh day Adventist Church to provide disaster relief to individuals and communities.

Palmero is a local spokesman of sorts, meeting with local and national leaders, as well as the media. He manages and monitors development of relief efforts in the country, oversees emergency food supplies during crop failure and helps install running water in communities.

On top of those duties, he serves as the director of the West Africa Union Mission, a health ministry. That job is mostly administrative as he provides guidelines and monitors Seventh-day Adventist hospitals in Liberia. Sierra Leone and Gambia.

The positions, though, come with an intriguing set of circumstances. Palmero is charged with operating religious-based services in some countries where the majority of the people are Muslim.

Electricity powers on and off so much that most people rely solely on cellular phones for communication. And danger is a reality. Even at the six-bedroom home Palmero shares with his wife and two sons, ages 4 and 2, there is one security officer stationed inside and outside the house 24 hours a day.

Lifelong calling

The work is a lifelong calling for Palmero. He was exposed to the life of missionaries at a young age. His father was a minister and a Seventh-day Adventist mission president, his mother an elementary school teacher.

When Palmero was a kid in the Philippines, his parents opened their home to doctors on medical missions. The teams of doctors who stayed under his parents' roof motivated the impressionable youngster. He talked with them and noticed they possessed jovial spirits and were well-traveled.

They also had luxuries others couldn't afford: sprawling homes, fine cars and anything else they wanted. Still, it was his grandfather who nudged Palmero toward medicine. Palmero earned a bachelor's degree in biology in 1988 and worked for a short time as a model.

Aggravated, his grandfather took him aside one day and told him to stop wasting time. He told him to go to medical school. If he did, Palmero's grandfather promised to pay his tuition. Palmero accepted the offer and headed to Angeles University College of Medicine. He graduated in 1993.

African adventure

While an intern at a medical center in Manila, Palmero met a female doctor with an adventurous spirit. They married in 1998. Securing positions as doctors in the Philippines meant they laced stiff competition for jobs. The hot, sticky climate and congestion also didn't suit the couple.

So two years later, Palmero and his wife, a pediatrician, moved to Africa where they both worked in Monrovia. Today, they are raising two children they describe as rowdy. "They don't have any government," Palmero jokes.

Palmero's call to serve SDA Cooper Hospital was a laboratory test for a physician executive in the midst of a war. The demands of the job included: