A decade ago, Grace Bandow, MD ’01, had established a thriving dermatology practice in Rhode Island, but she was feeling a little restless — in search of a “fresh perspective,” as she puts it now. Like many Americans, she watched as a protest movement in Syria metastasized into a civil war. Television images, while horrifying, were little more than snapshots of a catastrophe that seemed to grow more brutal by the day.
Then her telephone rang. A friend and dermatology colleague in New York City, Samer Jaber, MD, had been asked to help provide medical care to Syrian refugees in Jordan. He thought she might be courageous enough to go with him. She was, and that started her on the path to serving people in various countries in desperate need of medical and other help.
Bandow, who hails from Madison, Wisconsin, had been interested in international medical work at least since she was a medical student at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). While enrolled there, she traveled to work in a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. During her dermatology residency at Washington University in St. Louis, she studied tropical skin diseases in Brazil. She traces the roots of her commitment to global medical work to a combination of “an urge to help and a strong tendency toward wanderlust.” Her mother — who earned her bachelor of arts degree at UW–Madison in 1989 — modeled service through her work with Hospice, Amanda the Panda, and Guide Dogs of America. Bandow continues to be inspired by her mom, who is now 77 years old and still traveling the world.
Jaber and Bandow arrived in Jordan in March 2014 at the teeming Zaatari Refugee Camp, which then housed close to 80,000 displaced people. The medical team began to confront what Bandow calls “the sheer endless scale of the problem.” The total number of Syrian refugees is now estimated to be 14 million since the start of the war.
At that camp, mothers with children, children without mothers, and single fathers stood in the desert sun for hours waiting for a chance to be seen. The doctors worked on mats on the sand, in tents, or in makeshift buildings created from shipping containers. Refugees who came to see them lived in tents and other crude housing made from whatever material was available. Over the past seven years, these temporary homes have morphed into permanent structures, becoming one of Jordan’s largest cities. Seeing up to 300 patients per day, Bandow learned some basic Arabic phrases but relied heavily on the help of Jordanian medical students for translation.
Going to a desert environment in which people live in close quarters, Bandow and Jaber expected — and found — maladies such as leishmaniasis, impetigo, fungal infections, and scabies. They often treated common conditions like acne, rosacea, and various dermatitides. They found that typical skin conditions were made much worse by heat, sun, dehydration, crowding, and lack of basic supplies. They were surprised that simple medications and basic skin care were desperately needed. Writing about their work in the Washington Post inspired the interest of Unilever and spawned The Vaseline Healing Project, a collaboration among clinicians to help heal skin diseases in more than 70 countries affected by poverty, natural disasters, and war.
Many patients also sought treatment for burns from tent fires, from cooking with kerosene stoves, or from injuries sustained during the war itself. In almost every case, the combination of the harsh environment, overcrowded conditions, and lack of care made the illnesses and injuries worse. But the doctors and other care providers also supplied another critical ingredient: emotional support through simply seeing the patients and hearing their stories. Those patients, Bandow notes, needed to know that someone cared that they existed and had not been forgotten.
Bandow’s next mission took her to Bahrabise, Nepal, a small hamlet in the mountains about 15 miles from the Tibetan border. A severe earthquake in April 2015 had killed an estimated 9,000 people and injured more than 16,000. Approximately 97 percent of the homes in the district surrounding Bahrabise had been destroyed.
Bandow and Jaber worked with Nepali physicians through the Children’s Hospital for Eye, Ear, and Rehabilitation Services. In August 2016, the caregivers took hours-long Jeep rides into the remote mountains so they could tend to illnesses and injuries for more than 400 patients per day. But dry heat was less of an issue: August is monsoon season in Nepal, with near-daily rain and very warm temperatures.
Subsequently, Bandow provided additional medical help in Panama through New England Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic halted virtually all medical missions around the world. To continue service during this period of restricted travel, Bandow joined the MAVEN Project, a nonprofit organization that uses a digital platform to connect U.S. primary-care providers in safety-net clinics with experienced specialists for consultations, mentoring, and education.
While still offering help to those in need through this project, she has been able to devote herself to her busy practice, now in Connecticut, and to her husband and three step-kids. But Bandow’s wanderlust has not waned. She is planning her next steps for overseas medical work and is scheduled for a photography expedition to the Amazon.
Offering a perspective gained through her experiences, Bandow says, “Every place I have traveled, a consistent theme is that even a single patient interaction makes a difference. People in distress want to know someone is interested in their story, that they do not struggle alone, and that there is hope and a way to get better. Training local health care workers to continue care after a mission trip ends is the key to creating lasting results.”