ROMAC e-Newsletter 1 April 2018

 
 

Issue No. 1 April 2018
 
CREATING NETWORKS    |    IDENTIFYING NEED    |    TAKING ACTION

Chair Rob Wilkinson's Message

Rob WilkinsonDear Friends of ROMAC and Rotarians

Welcome to our inaurgural Rotary Oceania Medical Aid for Children (ROMAC) e-newsletter. We hope to publish this e-news regularly to keep you up-to-date with our activities and achievements. Our communication objectives are to create networks, identify needs and take action. You can assist by distributing this newsletter to your family, friends and colleagues and by supporting our call-to-action by donating or fundraising to enable us to take action to help children in need.

In March we celebrated 30 years since the first patient of ROMAC had life-saving surgery. Since then, over 500 children have received ROMAC support. Thank you for your help.
 

New Zealand Story

Mohammed is a two-year-old boy from Fiji who received third degree burns to 26% of his body in a house fire in early 2017. Mohammed needed surgery to release the scar tissue webbing between his fingers and to alleviate the contracted scars on his arms. He was referred to ROMAC for treatment by Dr Dinesh Lal and his wife Dharana who attended to Mohammed during one of their charity trips to Fiji.

Mohammed and his carer, grandmother Zeenat, arrived in Auckland in November and were hosted by Susan and Imran Hassan and their daughter Aysha. Surgery was carried out in Mercy Ascot and Dharana and members of the Satyr Sai cultural group  co-ordinated travel to clinic appointments and supported Zeenat during surgical procedures. Auckland Harbourside was the host Rotary club for the family with Lorraine Bartlett and Ashwini Sadhu each playing a major support role.

When he went home in January 2018, after successful surgery and rehabilitation, Mohammed was able to do a “high-five” for the first time in his life. 
 
 

Australian Story

Jesuinha is a twelve year old girl from Timor-Leste who was referred to ROMAC because of a severe heart condition. She was very underweight and could only walk 10 metres. Doctors advised that she required surgery urgently.
 
The ROMAC team responded magnificently, arranging for Jesuinha and her mother Florinda to fly from their home outside Dili to Sydney. Jesuinha had open heart surgery at the Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick and then spent five days in Intensive Care and another four days in the ward recovering.
The Timorese and Indonesian communities in Sydney joined with the Eastern Region carer team to provide fantastic support for Jesuinha and Florinda during this very traumatic period. They could not believe the transformation in Jesuinha only a few days after leaving hospital. In the words of District 9675 ROMAC Chair Maria Moran, “She looks so well, has put on weight and is singing and dancing everywhere - it’s fantastic!”.
Returning to Timor-Leste, Jesuinha and Florinda were met by family members, who were delighted at her transformation.

Patient Snapshot

To date, ROMAC has treated 508 children over the past 30 years. Here are the latest patient statistics about the ROMAC regions, countries and treatments.



Rotarians and Friends in Action

On Friday evening on 16 March 2018, 160 guests from throughout Australia and New Zealand gathered at NSW Parliament House in Sydney to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of ROMAC and its achievement of providing life saving and life enhancing surgery to over 500 children from island communities of the Southwest Pacific. You can view photos from the evening here. 

Highlights of the night included a wonderful welcome speech from ROMAC Chair Rob Wilkinson, an inspirational presentation from Rotary International President Ian Riseley, a warm and generous speech from our Parliamentary Host Rotarian Leslie Williams MP, and a highly entertaining keynote address from the CEO of the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network Dr Michael Brydon. Another highlight of the evening was an interview with former ROMAC patient Rosie Lotawa. You can download her very touching story here. 

Pictured left to right are ROMAC Chair Rob Wilkinson, RI President Ian Riseley, Leslie Williams MP, and Dr Michael Brydon.


The Rotary Club of Emerald in Queensland is organising a bike ride to raise funds for ROMAC. Read all about the Queensland Ride for ROMAC [Facebook link].

The Rotary Clubs of Canberra are running a Gala Ball to raise funds for ROMAC. Read all about the ROMAC Canberra Gala Ball.

To contribute what you or your Club is doing to help ROMAC, please email the Communications Coordinator at editor@romac.org.au.

How you can help ROMAC

Every day Rotarian and Friends are raising funds to cover travel, accommodation and treatment for children and their carers.

If every Rotarian in Australia and New Zealand donated $20 and every club matched with $20 for everyone of their members, we could cover the costs of all the children referred to us annually.

If every Friend donated $20 we could help even more children.

Australia - Donate now

New Zealand  - Donate now