Kudos to these 2 fine Doctors to help these poor people. Our own son Brian went to help the people of New Orleans with the Red Cross in 2005 for over 2 months. We were very proud of him for doing that. It took much courage him and 7 other people to run a shelter for over 1,000 people displaced by the Katrina disaster.
F.Y.I. Dr .King was our Families
personal Doctor for over 10 years a real nice guy and a good Doctor. Found this article in the Stockton Record and wanted to share.
Cadacio, 42, a family medicine doctor at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Offices on West Lane, is going home to the Philippines on a mission to do what she can to relieve some of the pain and suffering wreaked by the effects of Typhoon Haiyan two weeks ago.
Another area physician, Dr. Bill King, 59, a Kaiser assistant-physician-in-chief based in Manteca, is on call to follow Cadacio to the devastated island nation. They will be among more than 140 Kaiser doctors, nurses and other medical professionals from the large health provider's Northern California network who have signed up to spend two weeks in the disaster zone.
As of Wednesday, the Associated Press reported the Philippines government saying the typhoon had killed more than 4,000 people and left 1,600 missing. Uncounted tens of thousands more are injured and left homeless. Saving lives and providing emergency aid are still the main focus. Corpses are still being collected from beneath debris. But in a week or two, authorities will start transitioning into an "early recovery phase" and planning how best to rebuild the estimated 320,000 destroyed houses.
Cadacio is from Samar Island, a close neighbor of Leyte, the hardest hit island in the Philippine archipelago. She knows many people in Leyte's capital city of Tacloban.
"One of the main reasons I volunteered for this mission - every day since the typhoon hit the Philippines, it took us three days to get in touch with my uncle, who lives in Tacloban. When the news started coming in about the devastation, it would make me cry. I was just praying that Kaiser would offer something like this, so when I got the email I just decided to volunteer right away. To help the people," said Cadacio, who speaks Tagalog and Waray, the local dialect of the population most affected.
"When I was in med school, my parents always told me to make sure when you graduate, you always give back. After I graduated, I went back for four years to my home province Samar," she said.
Now she will return again, only this time she's not quite sure what she will be doing or where she will be assigned until she arrives.
Cadacio and King are traveling to the region on behalf of Relief International, a nonprofit humanitarian agency that provides emergency relief wherever it is needed worldwide. This is the first such mission for Cadacio.
King, on the other hand, was with Relief International in Haiti immediately after that Caribbean nation's devastating 2010 earthquake and has made several trips to Louisiana to help in the aftermath of 2005's Hurricane Katrina.
The doctors said one of the basic problems affecting the disaster zone is its water supply.
"There's contaminated water supply from human waste and dead animals. You save lives, especially young children who get diarrhea, when you provide them with a Gatorade-like drink. If there were a cholera outbreak, hours matter. That is the fear when you have a large amount of displaced people with no access to clean water," King said.
While the doctors will be called on for emergency medicine, treating infections and diseases common after a calamitous natural disaster, they also expect to provide critical relief for the local practitioners who have been working nonstop since the typhoon struck Nov. 8.
King credited Kaiser's Central Valley physician-in-chief, Dr. Moses Elam, with granting him and Cadacio permission to participate in the Philippines relief effort.
"I've had four or five people already come up and say to me they would take my patients," King said. The same is true for Cadacio, who said her Stockton colleagues have already stepped forward to handle her scheduled appointments for the next two weeks.
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