Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Eureka Times-Standard

By Sara Watson Arthurs The Times-Standard
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 -

EUREKA -- Every year, Claire Rombalski-Talmadge and Robert Talmadge head from the foggy shores of Humboldt County to the misty mountains of Vietnam to help children suffering from malnutrition and life-altering deformities.

Project Vietnam, an Orange County-based humanitarian program affiliated with the American Academy of Pediatrics, is drawing more and more Humboldt County practitioners.

Talmadge and Rombalski-Talmadge will be traveling to Vietnam for the third time this fall. The Humboldt Hill couple is among seven county residents included in the 109 people participating this year.

The doctors perform plastic surgery for cleft palates, cleft lips and eye defects. Last year the group performed more than 100 surgeries in five days, Rombalski-Talmadge said. The team also encounters patients with significant malnutrition, anemia, asthma and parasitic illnesses, she said. They focus on children, but also treat their parents and older adults with cataracts.

They educate Vietnamese doctors and nurses on how to treat such conditions themselves. Rombalski-Talmadge said a Vietnamese surgeon who learned to do some of the facial surgeries from the American doctors is now performing them himself. This year they plan to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation to Vietnamese nurses.

Cleft palate surgeries would cost $50 to $60 in Vietnam, a fraction of what they'd cost in the United States but a large sum in a country where the average annual income is in the hundreds of dollars, Rombalski-Talmadge said. She said women with cleft palates usually cannot get married, and the condition contributes to malnutrition by affecting the way people eat.

Talmadge said cleft palates are common in Vietnam, and the leading theory is that babies develop it in the womb because their mothers are malnourished.

Rombalski-Talmadge is the clinical supervisor at St. Joseph Hospital. Talmadge, a minister, serves as a hospital chaplain in Vietnam -- keeping frightened children and their families company before surgery, sharing stories and songs. The couple got involved with the project two years ago when they were asked to substitute for another local nurse who was ill.

Along with the doctors and nurses -- who pay their own travel expenses -- other Humboldt County residents contribute without leaving the country. Rombalski-Talmadge said several local agencies donated equipment, and two Girl Scout troops made get-well cards for the Vietnamese children.

Children travel long distances to get treatment in the city of Hoa Binh, where the group performed surgeries last year. Rombalski-Talmadge said rural villages pool their money to help their children get corrective surgery.

"Some people walk two or three days to bring their kids," she said.

Many of the Project Vietnam volunteers are Vietnamese-Americans, who serve as interpreters for the others. Talmadge and Rombalski-Talmadge don't speak Vietnamese, but said they connect with their patients nonetheless.

"You look in people's eyes, and you can't say anything they understand, but somehow, you communicate," Rombalski-Talmadge said.

Talmadge said he had expected to encounter some hostility in the country where the United States once fought a long war. He said the Vietnamese seem to have moved on emotionally more than Americans have.

"The war is gone," he said. "No one talks about it."

From oxen plowing the fields to the mountains resembling Oriental paintings, the two said they encountered a different world in Vietnam -- one filled with myriad shades of green, and lush with water.

"The beauty and intensity of the agriculture is just phenomenal," Talmadge said.

The two return to Vietnam in November for two weeks of surgery.