Archive: Around Town

Saturday evening brought a sizable crowd to Lansingville, where Andra and Chuck Benson hosted a benefit for a fistula hospital in Ghana.  Guests paid $50 per person to enjoy hors d'oevres and wine, live music, and a stunning view of Cayuga Lake and Lansing.  "The hospital will be treating local women who suffer this kind of chronic incontinence as a result of childbirth," says local organizer Sally True.  "They'll be treated there.  It's a course of treatment that takes anywhere from ten days to four months."

Fistula is an injury that can be caused by prolonged, obstructed labor that results in women constantly leaking feces and urine.  The approximately two-week repair and recovery period costs about $400 in Ghana.  "There are two parts to it," says Ithaca Obstetrics & Gynecology Doctor Catherine Husa, who returned from a visit to the hospital Friday.  "There is a maternal child center to take care of the problem before it happens, which is the ultimate solution.  The fistula hospital has 50 beds.  For that area it's very large.


Husa treated fistula herself while participating in the 'Doctors Without Borders' program in the Congo and Burundi.  "But I didn't feel that 'Doctors Without Borders' was the right kind of approach for OBGYN, for women's health, because they tend to go in, and they tend to leave," she says.  "Maternal child health is a long term problem.  We do have some here, and I did treat some here, but the kinds of fistulas, and the causes are very different.  And the numbers are far, far higher in Africa.  Here we have fistulas that result from chemotherapy, infection, cancer, and a few from childbirth.  But with the frequency that you see in Africa, or South America, and also in the Middle East, Bangladesh, or Southeast Asia."

The hospital was the brainchild of Sister Elizabeth Burns, who was a Sister of Mercy from Saint Louis, Missouri.  She went to teach in Nigeria on a Fulbright Scholarship, and during her stint she became aware of the fistula problem.  At age 70 she decided to devote the rest of her life to getting a hospital started.  Now 85, she is on the verge of realizing that dream.  The hospital is the project of the Ray Brook, NY-based Helena Ptochia Foundation , founded by  Chandler Ralph, CEO of Adirondak Medical Center.  Ralph attended the event with her husband.


When Husa heard about the hospital she contacted Burns through email at first, then on the phone.  Including last week's trip she has visited the hospital three times.  She says she was won over by the project when she visited it for the first time three years ago.  Then she connected with Ralph.  "By accident I was having lunch with a couple of friends, who said, 'Would you like to help us raise money for a fistula hospital in Ghana?'" Husa recalls.  "I said, 'How likely is it that there are two fistula hospitals in Ghana started by a nun!'  The rest just came together."

She and True have been friends since they were Ithaca High School students together.  True has joined the cause, helping to make local people aware of the need in Ghana.  After Husa spoke at Lansing's All Saint's Catholic Church a committee from that church and the Lansing United Methodist Church formed to create a fundraising event.  The Bensons offered their home, and others were approached to donate to the event.   "She's been doing a lot of traveling so I've been assisting her on the home front," True says.  "We're trying to make people aware of the problem and trying to raise money so that the hospital can treat as many women as possible."


Thomas and Karen Gisler, the chef at the Statler and his wife, made hors d' oevres, Andra Benson contributed food, and Glenora Winery donated wine.  The Lansing High School String Quintet performed at the beginning of the party, and Chuck Benson performed with a band later.  The Benson home sits on a Lansingville hillside, overlooking fields from their farm with a spectacular view of Cayuga lake.  Tents were set up where people could eat, drink and visit, and a bonfire lit up the grounds after the sun set. 

The completed hospital is expected to cost $600,000.  It is largely completed, but still needs equipment and furnishings.  So far the the Helena Ptochia Foundation has raised nearly $68,000 for the hospital.  Local organizers hoped to raise an additional $5,000 from the Lansingville party, but by Sunday $15,220 had been raised from that event alone, more than three times their goal.

That will help the imminent opening of the hospital.  "The hospital facilities are up, they're built," Husa says.  "It's a question of furnishing it and getting things like water, which has been solved... electricity, the Helena Ptochia Foundation provided a huge generator because the local resources are very slim.  Now that we have that, some of the equipment is up.  There is a lot of donated equipment, much of which does not work, and if it doesn't work in America it's even less likely to work in Ghana, because it's not going to be possible to repair it."

Husa says they hope to staff the hospital with three or four doctors.  "It's amazing how many things very few health care workers can do.," she says.  "My favorite thing is the enthusiasm of the people that are working.  I met people that were there for 25 or 30 years, and keep going through what I would say are overwhelming circumstances."

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