Brisbane grandparents Neil and Gwen Wetzig packed up their lives and now live six months a year in the Democratic Republic of Congo to try and make a difference.
"Even the newborn may be maimed or die, simply because the treating doctor did not understand what they were doing.""Just trying to repair the damage is not sustainable. What we wanted to do is something that's sustainable and that's why we started a training program to train these young doctors how to do the surgery, how to do it properly and not to panic when they're on their own," Dr Wetzig said.
Mrs Wetzig counts the relationships and the great need for medical training as the reasons to keep returning. "Every time we come home, we just get on the plane and say there's so much more that could be done there," she said. "But seeing Congolese doctors gain the confidence to then want to train others is what makes it worthwhile.""That's been a real vehicle for these doctors to feel they have a place where they can go and train themselves and train others," Dr Wetzig said.
But already the realities of life in the Congo have thwarted a scheduled trip of Australian doctors, after a breakout of Ebola last year.
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