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True miracle workers:

True miracle workers: "Firefighter" for people inflicted by diseases

Tuesday, February 21, 2012, 11:27 GMT+7

German philosopher Immanuel Kahn says: “Virtue itself is a reward”. Tuoitrenews would like to feature a series of stories of great people whose hearts have brought miracles to poor people affected with severe diseases in Vietnam. They really make miracles happen. For those people, doing charitable activities itself is a reward.

It takes a lot of times to convince Sam-Ottawa whom we get to know via email to talk about his medical endeavor and himself. He always declines to be interviewed by saying “Don’t take me too seriously. There is no need to mention what I did because it’s no big deal. I only knock on doors and ask for help from people that may be able to help those in need.”

1,500 emails and 200 phone calls He is the person connecting world-renowned American surgeon McKay McKinnon with major hospitals and doctors in Vietnam to operate on three local tumor patients in early January 2012: Nguyen Duy Hai, Thach Thi Sa Ly, and Kieu Thi My Dung. He exchanged more than 1,500 emails, and made over 200 telephone calls to build a bridge.

It’s quite difficult to connect the people involved in the cases because they live half a world apart. The tumor patients and their families are living in Vietnam, Sam is living in Ottawa, Canada, Dr. McKay McKinnon and Morningstar Entertainment’s film crew are living in the US.

Three years after taking early retirement from Statistics Canada, a Canadian government agency in Ottawa where he used to work as an economist, Sam-Ottawa by chance stepped inside the world of charitable activities when he received referrals to help people with rare and difficult diseases. His focus is on poor children, though he would not turn away some adult cases.

He claims that anyone can do what he did and it is not difficult at all if they are not shy knocking on doctors, hospitals and medical organizations’ doors in Vietnam and abroad.

Turning point

Sam-Ottawa, whose mother is Vietnamese and father is East Indian, was born Sam Seyadoussane in Phnom Penh of Cambodia. Sam’s family took refuge in Saigon (former name of Ho Chi Minh City) in 1974 when Cambodia was under control of Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime. At the time, Sam was living in Canada. He used to study abroad in France. He holds dual citizenship French and Canadian.

He admitted he knew nothing about medicine and all strange diseases that poor people were suffering from.

“Most of the cases that were referred by my acquaintances or some media came from Vietnam news stories. Like others, I read, felt sorry about the afflictions and then moved on with my own little life until I got a referral to help a Vietnamese little girl,” Sam told Tuoitrenews what pushed him to set up a virtual medical miracle network with focus on helping children afflicted with some dreadful diseases.

In late 2008, Sam was called on by Kate Maslen, Executive Director of Canada Children’s Bridge Foundation (CBF), to help an 8 year-old Nguyen Thi Kim Duyen, living in Long Phuoc commune in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. Duyen had Lamellar Ichthyosis, a disfiguring genetic skin disease, that to date is still untreatable. At that time, Kate Maslen was helping 9-year-old Pham Hoang Son she met in an orphanage in Vietnam’s northern province of Hai Duong. Son who was suffering from a huge facial tumor wrote Kate: “Aunt Kate, please help me!” CBF could not help Duyen because it was focusing on treating Son’s case that required a lot of money, resources that rallied world efforts to find Son a maxillofacial surgeon, a hospital that would take on the challenge… So, Kate asked Sam to help Duyen.

Sam admitted that he was not able to help Duyen’s case which is very challenging. But this chance encounter was a turning point for Sam to think about finding ways to help poor children afflicted with strange and difficult to treat diseases in Vietnam, as he said: “They don’t know who would be able or willing to help them with their awful conditions. Even when they come to a hospital, they would not know how to describe their ailments. They only cry, plea for mercy and beg for help…”

Sam then got acquainted with www.childrenofvietnam.org a US-based association with focus on helping Vietnamese children. The association asked him to look for children afflicted with facial tumors who can then be referred to a London UK-based medical charity organization for a chance to look normal again www.facingtheworld.net.

Operation Smile, a not-for-profit, volunteer medical services organization that provides reconstructive surgeries to children and young adults, also asks for his help in searching for children with cleft lips and palates.

miracle 1

Portrait of Sam Seyadoussane. "It’s no fun to be poor. It’s worst to be poor and very sick with no help on sight... After three years running the Virtual medical miracle network, I realize the value of the saying by Virgil: “The greatest wealth is health” ” - Sam SEYADOUSSANE

Economics model of charity

Sam used to be an economist, so he does charitable activities as an economist does with figures and formulas. He summarizes his so-called economics model of demand and supply: “Match huge demands for medical helps with limited supplies of the same.”

“There are only three major factors that are needed to help difficult and challenging cases: a. Diagnosis (identifying the exact condition of an illness); b. Prognosis (an opinion whether or not the condition is curable, based on medical examination and medical knowledge and c. Who can treat it where a miracle worker, doctor or surgeon can be found, be it in Vietnam or from overseas,” he explained more.

According to Sam, Google can provide answers to most of those questions. When you know Who and Where, you only need to start knocking on doors and ask for help. “What’s amazing is that for most cases that I called on doctors and hospitals, I rarely got turned down... If they couldn’t give a helping hand, they would try to connect me with someone who might be able to help,” Sam said.

The model has been gradually transformed into a very simple economics model based on three easy to understand parameters: 1. Demands: who needs help? 2. Supplies: Where I can find miracle workers like Dr. McKay McKinnon and 3. Bridge: Create a connection between Demands & Supplies.

“Lots of times, I only slept three or four hours a day, when I received a large number of difficult and desperate cases that required urgent medical attention.”

After three years running the Virtual medical miracle network, Sam and his fellow associates have directly or indirectly helped over 600 cases.

“But I stopped counting 6 months ago. I find it really funny that what I did is just like a person who saw a fire and screamed: “Fire! Fire!”, so that some people would come over to help put out the fire,” he said.

“When you see a house on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to try to extinguish it with buckets of water.”

For Sam, who was asked to share a story… one of the most memorable one was about a newborn little baby girl of a few months old who needed an urgent heart operation, failing which she would have died.

“I contacted some organizations including VinaCapital Foundation, which runs “Heartbeat Vietnam. VCF very quickly connected the baby girl to HCMC Heart Institute. Her life was saved thanks to the golden hands of Dr. Nguyen Minh Tri Vien who performed the very challenging heart case. To show gratitude, her poor mother invited us to attend her daughter’s wedding ceremony… in the far future,” he said.

He could not remember her name, but “When I have times, I will look for her photos and give them to you. I just remember she looked very pretty and alert after the surgery,” Sam said.

But he also claimed the cases that impressed him the most were the ones he could not help: “It is so sad to see children losing their lives although they could have been saved if we had known them earlier.”

Sam is yet to return to Vietnam but he said he has a lot of friends there. “Hopefully, I will return to Vietnam in one or two years because some local hospitals and organizations have invited me to come,” Sam wrote in an email.

He and his fellows in the Virtual medical miracle network have undertaken several projects which have a strong attachment to his mother’s hometown like proposing that a National Bone Marrow Registry be set up so that Vietnam would join the world community to help Leukemia victims everywhere; pushing for TeleMedicine and Teledermatology - Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technologies in order to provide clinical health care at a distance. It is also used to save lives in critical care and emergency situations.

One project that has been brought to fruition that makes Sam very happy is to be able to help Vietnam cope with Epidermolysis Bullosa, a most dreadful genetic skin condition for which EB children were not treated. Sam is grateful to all people walking with him on this EB miracle for Vietnam where a whole EB patient population can benefit from world medical expertise being shared with Vietnam since around September 2010.

Sam and his associates also helped facilitate an EB medical teaching mission from Australia and New Zealand to come to Vietnam in August 2011, thus bridging our Vietnamese doctors with dermatology experts from overseas to help our Vietnamese EB children.

Tuoitrenews

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