Dr. Koning is a general surgeon who lives in Bend. He recently retired from the practice of medicine in the Bend area, and has been working with the Medical Teams International, traveling and working in Ethiopia.In the course of his work there, he has discovered that more than 20 thousand children die every year from hydrocephalus, commonly known as “water on the brain.” In Ethiopia , there is one doctor for every 40,000 people. There are only two surgeons in the entire country. The children with hydrocephalus could all be saved if they had a $40 shunt put in, to drain the fluid from inside the skull. The immediate problem isn’t the lack of surgeons; it is the lack of shunts. There aren’t any. And there isn’t any money to buy any. What Dr. Marinus Koning would like to do is raise funds to purchase shunts for the Myungsung Christian Medical Center , in concert with Medical Teams International, for a new clinic specifically for hydrocephalic children. For every $40 raised, a child’s life will be saved.
