Kaua'i doctor to lend his skills to Iraqis
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau
KILAUEA, Kaua'i — Dr. Jeff Goodman, a family medicine physician who has trained mujahedeen medics in Pakistan and set up medical clinics in Afghanistan, is heading for Kuwait and Iraq on a medical mission whose details are not yet clear.
Jeffrey Goodman
"It's a little frustrating. You don't know what you're going to be doing, you don't know what to take, you don't know how well-trained the medical staff are," he said yesterday, a few hours before his departure.
Kilauea physician Jeffrey Goodman poses with townspeople in front of one of the clinics he opened last year in Afghanistan while working with the International Medical Corps. Goodman is now on his way to Iraq.
Goodman, 58, has worked for 31 years in this rural north shore community, but has harbored special interests international medicine, including infectious diseases. He volunteers with the International Medical Corps, an emergency nonprofit group that provides medical care in regions in crisis.
He first went out with the group for three months in 1987 in Peshawar, Pakistan, training Afghan medics who would treat their people during the Soviet war there. He was back in Pakistan in 1991, training some of the same medics in public health issues.
In those days, it was difficult on his family and his finances. Today, he is older, his wife has passed away and his kids are grown. This year's trip will be his second in less than two years.
"I do it because I can, I guess. It's something I enjoy doing, so at some level I'm doing it for myself. Besides, who else is going to do it?"
His most recent assignment was last year in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was in charge of teams that set up 20 medical clinics in three provinces. Goodman said they see 27,000 patients a month.
GOODMAN
Goodman was to fly out of Hawai'i last night, and to arrive in Kuwait City tomorrow. The kind of work he ends up doing in Iraq will depend, he said, on what the needs are.
"We know they have many health problems: malaria, malnutrition, leishmaniasis (a bacterial infection of the skin and internal organs), lots of staph infections, chronic diarrhea and probably some tuberculosis," he said.
He expects to do some direct medical care as well as some training. This trip is a relatively short one, he said, just 2 1/2 months. He is scheduled to return home and to his patients at the Kaua'i Medical Clinic on June 28.
