Dr. and Mrs. Gess raised their 6 children in Sierra Leone. Dr. Gess is arranging to return to Sierra Leone in January 2015 with $100,000 worth of eye medicines and equipment to help the people there - funds which he raised himself. Ever since the Gesses retired to Minnesota in1970, Dr. Gess has returned each year in Annual Pilgrimages to Sierra Leone for more medical work. In 1984, Dr. Gess established the Kissy UMC Eye Hospital just outside Freetown under the auspices of the United Methodist Church. That hospital is located in a poor area east of Freetown, the capital city. It is also the same hospital where the late Dr. Martin Maada Salia served as Chief Surgeon until he contacted Ebola in one of his part-time volunteer work in an Ebola Treatment clinic elsewhere near Freetown before he died last week at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Because of his age, Dr. Gess will not be treating any patients or have anything to do with the Ebola virus disease that has devastated the country. He will be busy, instead, repairing and replacing antiquated Ophthalmology equipment and motivating people. But he has declared that should he contact Ebola - he hopes not - he does not want to be taken to the USA or any other country for treatment. He is to be treated in Sierra Leone and in the event said treatment fails to cure him and he dies, he wants to be buried in Sierra Leone! Below is a link from Minnesota Public Radio with a story, both in print and in audio, about the indomitable-indefatigable Dr. Lowell Gess, a huge hero in Sierra Leone! [First Published in the EBOLA REPUBLICS facebook page]
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 19:11:54 +0000
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