It’s a Go! MMS Is Relaunching Its Missions!

After a forced 18-month hiatus, MMS is furbishing its tools, honing its scalpels, adjusting its optics, repacking its boxes, and resuming its missions as of the end of September.

In fact, for our first mission to Tanzania, MMS will be working with its local partners from the Association of Obstetric Fistula Surgeons of Tanzania (AOFST) to go help women in the Kitavi region, in Western Tanzania. This mission will be led by the AOFST team but will be financed by MMS and accompanied by Jean Charles Alimi and Regis Deretz, surgeon, and logistician respectively of MMS France. Our two representatives, who will be closely associated with the mission, are also tasked with exploring the possibility of MMS leading a mission on their own in this new destination for our organization.

MMS Israel is actively preparing its upcoming mission to Rwanda, scheduled for early December 2021. Shachar Aharony, who was Dr. Corcos’ Fellow in 2016 in Montreal, and who has participated in five past missions, will be the mission Director. MMS Israel has been recently created and their team for this Rwandan mission consists of surgeons, nurses and volunteers all hailing from the Rabin Medical Center in Tel Aviv. Of course, MMS and MMS France will offer counsel as well as logistic and financial support.

In early 2022, it will be MMS and MMS France’s turn to lead missions. We will be able to offer more details later. The objective of the four aforementioned missions is to treat between 60 to 80 women afflicted with fistula (communication between the bladder and/or rectum and the vagina) who are living their own hell, but who cling to the hope that an organization such as ours will help treat them and give them back their lives.

Finally, we will once again organize our mission to follow up with our Rwandan patients. This mission, which was cancelled in extremis at the beginning of the pandemic, aims to visit our operated patients in their own villages to evaluate the long-term success of their surgery and their social reintegration. This very important mission will be led by Dr. Quentin Alimi who is Dr. Corcos’ current fellow and who has also participated in previous missions.

Dr. Alimi and Dr. Aharony along with other talented youth undoubtedly represent the future of MMS.