Dr. Mike Pendleton volunteered at the Mother of Mercy Hospital in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan for four months.
Dr. Pendleton has been a practicing physician for over forty years. He and his wife raised their four children in rural Oregon where he had a comprehensive clinic and hospital-based family practice providing all ages and identities with services including ER, OB, ICU, and community health. In the early 90s, he began to branch out into international volunteer medical work. He has deployed with a number of organizations, starting in Vietnam before working in locations around the world including Albania, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Sudan. He has been a visiting professor through the Fulbright Program at the Kazakhstan National Medical University as well as a Mentor for HIV Care and Teaching in Botswana through the Botswana-UPenn Partnership Gaborone.
CMMB was thrilled when Dr. Pendleton joined the CMMB Volunteer Program to provide healthcare to patients of the Mother of Mercy Hospital (MMH). This remote referral facility is the only hospital serving a sprawling area of approximately 1 million people. Dr. Pendleton was travelling over to assist the facility’s director and only full-time physician, Dr. Tom Catena. Mike said what drew him most to MMH (and to CMMB) is the emphasis on strengthening capacity and increasing the quality of patient care. On the way to Sudan, he packed an MDP allocation of Cisplatan, a chemotherapy drug that is used particularly for treating head and neck cancers in with his luggage to fortify the stock. The patient population served by the hospital suffers from incredibly high rates of cancer.
Mike asked that he not be referred to as an ‘MDP hero’, but rather ‘the guy who was both the courier and user (of the medicines) on several heroic patients’. And he asked that we share the story of one patient in the male ward that he treated. This man had TB complicated by sepsis, which they were fighting with fluids and antibiotics. Over two weeks, the patient improved slowly, but Dr. Pendleton believes that this was thanks to the care provided by the patient’s brother who lovingly fed and bathed the patient. Ultimately, the team was lucky enough to send the patient home and Dr. Pendleton believes that having such a caring family member will put him one step ahead during his recovery.
Dr. Pendleton looks forward to the upcoming evolution of the Hospital. He is working with other CMMB Volunteer Program alumni who served at MMH to line up new avenues of support, both through staffing a full-time administrator and by providing of medicines. Mike is a professional who is truly dedicated to improving lives wherever he goes, and we look forward to seeing where that is next.
Thank you, Mike!
