Penrose-St. Francis is doing its share

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jan 28, 2005 | by THE GAZETTE

A local doctor will spend a month in Indonesia caring for tsunami victims.

Brian Crawford, an emergency room physician at Penrose-St. Francis, was picked to join a relief mission run by Project HOPE, a 47-year-old agency that provides medical care worldwide. He left this week.

Crawford, 36, of Manitou Springs also has done relief work in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala.

In addition to providing basic medical care, Crawford expects to treat diseases that have emerged since the tsunami.

"There have been reported cases of cholera in some camps," he said. "Currently, most are diseases we would expect from poor water and sanitation."

Crawford and the rest of the Project HOPE medical team will work on the Navy hospital ship Mercy.

Another Penrose employee, nurse Cathy Byham, and her husband, Rick, left this week for six weeks of relief work in Muelaboh, a town 65 miles west of the devastating earthquake's epicenter. Both are taking six weeks of leave to return to an area where they worked as missionaries for 12 years from the late 1980s to late 1990s.

"That's part of what we bring to the situation," said Rick Byham, who works as director of missionary candidates for Christian Missionary Alliance. "We speak the language and have an understanding of the culture."

Penrose colleagues donated cash and medical supplies for the couple's work. Cathy Byham will work with medical aid projects. Rick Byham will install watertreatment systems, pump salt water from freshwater wells and help local fishermen replace boats, nets and other equipment, he said.