\ Eldoret 2010 ( Executive Director's Report) Continued... For Eldoret 2010, like Eldoret 2008, RJW re-partnered with The Johns Hopkins Hospital and sponsored an intense one-week mission featuring a team of 26 surgeons and support staff led by RJW’s Executive Director, Andrew Owiti, with the Distinguished Professor Dr. Alessandro Olivi of Johns Hopkins Hospital serving as Medical Team Leader. This team of 26 men and women of goodwill included surgeons from as far as Colombia, Italy, Rwanda and the United States. In all, 7 countries and 4 continents were represented. Eldoret 2010 was not only a step up from Eldoret 2008 in terms of the size and diversity of the team, it was also a step up in intensity. In 4 operative days the team completed 31 operations. In contrast, our 2008 rate was 32 operations in 8 operative days; thus in 2010 we had the same impact as in 2008 but in half the time! I am particularly happy to report that Eldoret 2010 was particularly successful in realizing the Foundation’s mission to train aspiring Kenyan/ African surgeons. Fully 8 members of the team were African neurosurgery residents resident in and training at African hospitals in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda who had an opportunity to work with and learn from their American counterparts, and, just as importantly, our American based neurosurgeons had an opportunity to test their skills in a less than cutting edge operating environment. This kind of cross-border cooperation is both the touchstone and manifestation of RJW’s mission to build bridges among medical practitioners in Kenya, the USA and Europe. Because of our huge success in 2008 the bar was raised and the operations in 2010 were particularly challenging. Several patients were infants or toddlers – one was barely 2 months old; other operations required extreme precision because the tumor abutted several important cranial nerve structures; and yet others required marathonian endurance – lasting 13+ hours; still more tested the ingenuity and creativity of out team because of the sheer size of the tumors – one tumor filled the entire left hemisphere of the skull cavity, effectively crushing the brain into an area half the size it ought to exist in. No matter the challenge, the team systematically and responsibly prepped the cases and worked through them diligently, and, ultimately, successfully. I cannot overstate how proud I am of the team. I am also thrilled to report that we reprised our patient outreach program by visiting with one of our patients from 2008. The patient, a man in his 60s who had a pituitary tumor transphenoidally removed, was in good health, and in even better spirits; free from any medical deficits due to the operation and living at a higher quality of life than even we had hoped he would attain when we operated in 2008. His high quality of life was evidenced by the nature of the medical problems he currently suffers from. Without violating his privacy, his medical complaints in 2010 were comparable to those of any healthy American man his age living in, say, Federal Hill, Baltimore. Again, RJW’s community outreach program added an extra dimension to the project and allowed our 2010 Distinguished Lecturer Dr. Russ Robertson, Chair of Family Medicine at Northwestern University to use the practitioner side of his formidable skill-set to potentiate further the healing that is RJW’s business . Dr. Robertson also gave extremely well received grand rounds at the Aga Khan hospital in Nairobi following the Eldoret portion of the mission. We are confident that bridges were built that will funnel talent, knowledge and goodwill back and forth between Northwestern University and various medical institutions in Kenya. I would like to close by mentioning another area where we have learned from 2008. Medical supplies are ALWAYS an issue on missions such as this. I am proud and humbled to announce that Eldoret 2010 brought medical equipment worth an estimated $250,000 to Eldoret with the vast majority left behind at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital for their use. Products such as Radial Artery Catheters to Subdural Evacuating Port Systems and Neuro Skull drills were donated to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. This type of generosity is the kind of “volunteering of time, talent and treasure” (in this case, treasure) that RJW was founded on. Even as we bask in the success of Eldoret 2010, we are plotting missions for 2011! Watch this space! Sincerely, Andrew L. Owiti Executive Director, Ruben J. Williams Foundation