February 2004

Sister Jo is an energetic, irreverent, brilliant surgeon who has been running the surgical unit at the Wewak Hospital for the last seven years. Schooled in England, she has enjoyed a stimulating forty-year career performing surgery and lecturing in Africa, England and now Papua New Guinea.

Because of the scarcity of basic medical supplies, the practice of medicine in this coastal village is a special challenge. Sister Jo must often resort to using fishing line to stitch wounds and close incisions, as sutures are scarce. Medicines for pain, infections, parasites, malaria and myriad other illnesses are either non-existent or carefully rationed. Sister Jo’s ingenuity and ability to improvise are often the only reliable supplies on hand.

Zena met Sister Jo at a dinner party during her trip to Papua New Guinea in May of 2003. She had no idea at the time that Sister Jo would be the inspiration for the  beginning of a nonprofit corporation, but here we are, several months later, at the debut of Village Relief Foundation.

Dedicated to providing medicines and medical supplies to doctors and nurses in developing countries, VRF sent a “test” box of donated sutures, Tylenol, and surgical gloves that took three weeks to arrive in isolated Wewak. In early January, we shipped more of everything to Sister Jo, along with some Cipro, a very effective antibiotic.