An Australian physician known for his humanitarian work worldwide will address members of the Wadesboro Rotary Club on Thursday, Sept. 27.
The meeting begins at noon at Welika Lake seafood restaurant. The public is invited.
Dr. Ray Hodgson is a specialist gynecologist. His presentation is titled “Life and Death in Nepal.”
He is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of New South Wales. He is a Rotarian and serves as international director of the Rotary Club of Port Macquarie, New South Wales. He is also the director of the medical school of the University of New South Wales, and examiner of obstetrics and gynecology specialists for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
For a number of years, Dr. Hodgson worked as a medical volunteer in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh in India. In 2001, he provided voluntary aid to HIV orphanages in rural Thailand, caring for infected children whose parents were victims of the disease.
In 2010, Dr. Hodgson founded the international aid organization Australians for Women’s Health with a focus on the appalling state of maternal health and genital prolapse in Nepal. He and his team of volunteers have been operating regular surgical camps in remote areas of Nepal, where they perform challenging operations on women suffering from genital prolapse, a condition in which the uterus and other organs protrude through the vagina. Prolapse leads to chronic pain, difficulty walking and sitting, and severe urinary incontinence. In addition to the physical effects, genital prolapse frequently leads to wives being abandoned by their husbands.
Each year, thousands of Nepalese women and their babies die from complications of their pregnancy. Dr. Hodgson and his teams are addressing the problem with regular educational programs in rural and remote Nepal, training local surgeons, midwives, and nurses.
Dr. Hodgson’s current focus is to build a mothers and babies hospital in Charikot in eastern Nepal. The new facility will provide a modern, safe environment with up-to-date operating suites to treat many more suffering women. The top floor of the hospital will be devoted to teaching local medical personnel.
The project is being supported by Rotary District 7680, which includes the Wadesboro club, and through a Rotary International Global Grant to equip the hospital.
In addition to his medical work, Dr. Hodgson is an author. His book, “Heartbreak in the Himalayas,” a number one bestseller on Amazon, describes the challenges he and his teams of
volunteers face in their surgical camps in remote Nepal. Profits from the book will help fund construction of the hospital.
Dr. Hodgson was named Humanitarian of the Year in Rotary Zone 8.
The Wadesboro Rotary Club, founded in 1927, provided financial support to the hospital construction project last year, as did all 57 clubs in Rotary District 7680.