Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 53

jii i I rum aiLJjLiiiiiiiwiiiiiiiwiiiMiwjiJwtwiijijiii'iiiii'ijiiiwwf miiwhhiummmhw miww'iniiinTiMi mit imrmm'mmfmtmwMwiavvmftmriTwmimn wmum maw rryu wrmnrrTTi iiitti irpnwn mi rim i mi hi i i i in i i 'ff- i tii r-n 111 it 11 i 1 -r i 1 Courier-Post Thursday, July 23, 1992 Bill Reinhardt Features Editor 486-2434 Ah ealthy dose of South Jerse AT FIRST GLANCE Doctor busy in Sri Lanka LIVING HEALTHY .1 A I i -v jj jii I p'Xr ft By the foot After a day of summer sightseeing, don't forget your feet, advises Dr. Michael Fenwood of the University of Illinois Medical Center. To make sure they'll be healthy traveling companions the next day, treat your feet to a five-minute massage. Gently knead the skin, working from the heel area to the toes. Give the most attention to the heel, ball and toes of each foot.

Rub in a light cream or moisturizer -THERESA A. GLAB By THERESA A. GLAB Courier-Post Staff In a hospital with no running water, no bed sheets and no diapers for newborns, a Cherry Hill pediatrician learned he could work amid privation. "It's hard to imagine such a health system can exist on the same planet," said Dr. Jerry Ehrlich, whose four months in Sri Lanka made him rely on old- fashioned doctoring.

"By American standards, you would think the lack of technology there would be insurmountable, but when you get back to the basics, it's amazing how much medicine you can practice from a patient history and a physical exam. If you spend more time listening to the patient, you come to the same diagnosis." Ehrlich was dispatched to Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) by Doctors Without Borders, whose volunteers go to war-torn or disaster-devastated areas. "Sri Lanka has had a civil war for about 10 years, so you have refugee camps, uprooted people and blown-up buildings. "The hospital where I worked was not rocketed, but it had deteriorated because of poverty and war. They had a bare-bones lab, old X-ray equipment and they kept running out of X-ray film," he said.

The hospital, Batticaloa General, is a 700-bed institution with 180 spaces for children. "That includes mats on the floor, because there are not enough beds," Ehrlich said. Aided by two interns, he was the only pediatrician in the hospital, which admitted 365 children in a typical month. In one such month, 11 young patients died. "When a child died, the mothers just threw themselves on the ground.

It HAVE YOU HEARD? Im, fai.i. hhii i iimi-ih nunl mi. i. I spent four months in Sri Lanka, Experience: A member of Debtors Without Borders, Dr. Jerry Ehrlich of Cherry I an Asian island country that has gone through a decade-long civil war.

Race relations Sixty-eight percent of parents would approve if their child decided to marry a member of a different race, according to a McCall's reader poll. The August issue of the magazine reports on racial attitudes of readers with children. Eighty-one percent are discouraged about the future of race relations for their children and coming generations as a result of the Los Angeles riots; 69 percent of their kids have friends of other races. JUDITH W. WINNE "We had patients who were trapped for 24 hours or 48 hours because the army suspected there were terrorists in their village.

The child would be gasping his last by the time he reached the hospital," Ehrlich Mid. When he returned to his South Jersey practice earlier this year, another volunteer replaced him in Batticaloa. "Before I retire, I will probably participate in another mission," the 57-year-old pediatrician said. "If I volunteered today, within the week I might be on a plane to Sarajevo (in former Yugoslavia), where doctors are needed." In return, he spent a lot of time lecturing them on pediatrics. "We used a room with a blackboard; once upon a time, it was a library." The Sri Lankan interns are well trained, but lack the support of equipment and pharmaceuticals, he said.

"We could have saved infants with basic respiration equipment that didn't exist there. And a difficult thing was knowing what was wrong with a patient but having to say, 'Gee, if we had this drug, we could have him doing well. For some youngsters, the civil war ruined chances of survival. was very emotional," he said. And the pace of the twice weekly clinic was intense.

"I would see 40 or 50 patients in three hours. For lunch, I would have time to get a coconut from a guy at a stand," Ehrlich said. Contributing to the children's health problems were contaminated food and water, poor sanitation, poor nutrition, crowded living conditions and the prevalence of disease-carrying mosquitoes. "I saw severe diarrhea, malaria, encephalitis, respiratory illness, kidney disease, even cobra bites. For the tropical diseases, I learned from the interns," Ehrlich said.

Dentist brings smiles to Vietnamese faces BEST ETS What's on your mind? Always a place to have fun while you learn, the Franklin Institute on Benjamin Franklin Parkway and 20th Street in Philadelphia is sponsoring an informal talk entitled Mind Matters. Tonight's lecture, beginning at 7, covers myths, dreams and the unconscious. This is one of a series of talks concentrating on the brain and its functions. i i c- 1 1 i i i i fc 1 -) 2 i patients, he said. "The government medical people screen patients for us.

The morning after we arrive, we give patients a priority number, based on what we can accomplish and the need of the patient. "In Hue, there were 250 to 300 pre-screened patients. Our goal was to help 100 to 110 of them. We ended up doing 143. It put a strain on us and on the supplies we brought, but if we didn't do it the child may never get the defect corrected," Seran said.

"People in Third World countries are less tolerant of birth defects, so we were giving a child a chance to lead a normal life." For their efforts, the volunteers experience a flood of thankfulness. "You see this unbelievable gratitude from the parents, who stay in the hospital with the children. Before I went, people told me I would become emotionally involved. "I said, "Well, other people do, but it won't affect me that But you really get caught up in it." Seran had not been to Vietnam before, so it was fascinating for him. "If we weren't going back there this year, to Haiphong, I would have liked to go to Romania." Based in Norfolk, with chapters in South Jersey and Philadelphia, Operation Smile sends out teams of five or six plastic surgeons, five or six anesthesiologists, a dentist and several nurses.

"It's essentially a small hospital grouping," Seran said. By THERESA A. GLAB Courier-Post Staff For three weeks in November, Dr. Clifford C. Seran will take his dental skills from South Jersey to Vietnam.

It will be his third round as a volunteer with Operation Smile, an organization sending medical-dental teams to developing countries. The patients are mostly children with birth defects: cleft lip, cleft palate, clubfoot or hand deformities. While the youngsters await surgery, Seran tends to their dental needs. "I go from one operating table to the next. A lot of them need extractions of badly broken-down teeth.

They have had very little dental care." On his first stint in Vietnam, in Ho Chi Minh City in 1990, he extracted about 600 teeth. List year, in Hue, he extracted about 400. "As an orthodontist, I do not extract teeth here," said Seran, who practices in Haddonfield and in Pitman. His tooth-straightening specialty would be a luxury in the Southeast Asian country, where even basic health- care equipment and supplies are unavailable. "I didn't believe how poor it would be there.

When I first saw the conditions, I expected infection and cross-contamination. There were three operating rooms, each with two tables, something that is not on the same sterile level as our hospitals." With limited time in a country, the volunteers cannot change conditions, so they concentrate on the QUOTE OF bJJ THE DAY By Ltetira L. tflcklixj, (jooSsr-l She won't pose nude To travel: South Jersey dentist Clifford Seran will soon be headed to Asia. Emerson, Lake Palmer band together again I respect my body too much for that. I guess in a way I'm a hypocrite because I go out there dressed like a tramp every week, but jj If you're going Emerson, Lake Palmer are scheduled to appear Friday at the Mann Music Center, 52nd and Parkside Avenue, Philadelphia.

Show time is 8 p.m. Admission is $25, $22.50, $18 and $13 ($15.50 day of show). To order tickets, call 665-2500. that's my job. CHRISTINA APPLEGATE of Married With Children INDEX By CHUCK DARROW Courier-Post Staff "Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends That line from Emerson, Lake Palmer's 1973 song "Karri Evil 9" takes on added significance Friday when the popular 1970s progressive-rock trio begins its first world tour in 14 years at the Mann Music Center.

Reunion tours by bands of that era are commonplace. But the smart money these many years said the three Englishmen would never get back together because of widespread reports of dissension in the ranks during the unit's waning days. But here's July 1992, and it's like they never left. Last month, the group released an LP called Black Moon (VictoryPLG) that is vintage Emerson, Lake Palmer. Its material hopscotches between bassist-vocalist Greg Lake's acoustic-based ballads and patented symphonic-styled rave-ups featuring Keith Emerson's virtuoso keyboard work and the pinpoint precision of Carl Palmer's drumming.

There's even the trademark rocked-up version of a classical piece, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. For the past week or so, Emerson, Lake 4 Palmer and their crew have been camped out in Philadelphia, spending their days rehearsing at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pa. During a recent break, Palmer explained how the three former teammates renewed their partnership. According to Palmer, the three musicians werij approached by Phil Carson, an Atlantic Records executive when the band recorded for the label in the '70s. "He said, 'I'd like to see you about a project, some film As it turned out, "there was no film.

But we hung in there anyway and began playing. We played for two or three weeks and came up with so much music, we finally said, 'Why don't we The result was Black Moon. A tour, reasoned Palmer, was the logical next step. But given the complex nature of Emerson, Lake Palmer's music, it hasn't been particularly easy for them to get together a set. I iuUou SOU Lixii iuuh, I uy2 ASK THE EXPERTS 4 BRIDGE TABLE 4 COMICS 5 CROSSWORD 4 DEAR ABBY 4 ENTERTAINMENT 6 IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY 4 PEOPLE 4 POP'N ROCK 3 TELEVISION 8 Sounds: Emerson.

Lake Palmer are back. tt fc .1 ft At m- m. te a. I.