Weber State president visits Ghana with respiratory therapy students
Charity Beyond Borders Country Liaison Richard Sarfo, left, and Weber State University President Charles Wight, right, prepare lap chalkboards for Ambition School for the Needy.
Left to right, University of Kansas Medical Center respiratory therapy student Sydney Lovell, Weber State University respiratory therapy professor Lisa Trujillo and Weber State adjunct respiratory therapy faculty member Sarah Burdash intubate a 2-day-old infant in an effort to support her breathing. The baby was stabilized until it was transported to a larger facility in the back seat of a pickup truck while the respiratory therapy team continued providing resuscitation.
Brayden Crismon, left, and Weber State University President Charles Wight, right, hold children from the Larabanga village in the North of Ghana on their shoulders before joining a family in the rural village for dinner.
At this clinic held by the Weber State University respiratory therapy group in Central Market area of Kumasi the team was able to asses over 300 community members including basic physical assessment, breast cancer screening and eye exams. The team also taught oral and hand hygiene, HIV/AIDS protection and distributed toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss and condoms.
OGDEN — Charles Wight had been back from Ghana for two weeks, but as he sat at his desk the afternoon of Tuesday, June 20, he was still processing the trip.
Wight had just spent almost a month on a continent he had never been to before with about 20 respiratory therapy students from Weber State University, where he serves as president.
“It was good for Ghana and I’m absolutely convinced it was great for our students and I’m really happy they had the opportunity to do this,” he said.
Ghana’s leading cause of death is lower respiratory infections, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caused 11 percent of fatalities in 2012.
Wight said part of his job on the trip included working with government and education officials to make respiratory therapist an official profession, which requires approval from the Ministry of Health.
“It’s largely because so many people cook over open fires indoors, so they breathe a lot of smoke during their lives,” Wight said.
Respiratory therapy professor Lisa Trujillo has been taking students to Ghana for 11 years but this most recent trip was her 22nd visit to the west African country. She and University of Kansas respiratory therapy professor Karen Schell have been working together to foster their profession in Ghana since about 2011.
For her efforts, Trujillo received the International Council for Respiratory Care’s Toshihiko Koga, MD International Medal in 2016.
During this recent trip, the group traveled to towns throughout Ghana, holding clinics to provide not only respiratory health services but oral and eye exams and breast cancer screenings.
Trujillo said she’s always impressed by her students who do well despite having limited experience.
“They’re in an environment where not everybody speaks English,” she said. “It’s a pretty chaotic densely-populated space.”
In his office, Wight pointed to a photo of of an outdoor corridor packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people, some of whom were in blue scrubs.
“There are thousands of people shoulder to shoulder going both way through this hallway and the people in blue scrubs are conducting a health clinic in the middle of this madness,” he said. “It was just crazy.”
The trip is organized every year through the Weber State Office of Continuing Education. Wight and his wife Victoria paid to go, just like the students.
“It was a chance for students to learn something completely transformational about the world, something that was entirely out of their knowledge and experience,” Wight said. “It’s one of the really important reasons we do this kind of thing at Weber State.”
Having gone to Ghana so many times, Trujillo is sometimes recognized on the street as “Mama Lisa.”
“It’s nice to have a foothold where we can show up and I feel like if there’s something we needed, we would have resources and people willing to help,” Trujillo said.
In the 1990s, Wight made trips to rural villages in Russia for research while teaching at the University of Utah so he said he was used to “rustic living.” Some of the hotels the group stayed in had running water while others didn’t.
“Even though people there don’t have a lot of money and don’t have a lot of resources like they do here, they’re still incredibly joyful people and we don’t really have to feel sorry for them,” he said. “In fact, they’ve figured out some things that we haven’t.”
Contact education reporter Anna Burleson at aburleson@standard.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnagatorB or like her on Facebook at Facebook.com/BurlesonReports.
