In Kenya healthcare is a luxury. The operation that Jeremiah Mburu’s son needed for a birth disease costs 400 euros and the average salary there is less than 150 euros per month. “It was impossible for our family to take on. We just had to pray,” says Mburu. His prayers were only fulfilled when they found Solidarity Surgery, the NGO that took on the child’s intervention. The organization is made up of healthcare workers from the Region of Murcia who have been performing surgical interventions in Africa since 2000. In addition to Kenya, they have been in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mali and Western Sahara. The oatha documentary directed by Jorge Martínez that was presented in mid-May at La Cineteca in Madrid, collects stories like this and shows the cooperative work that these doctors do during their vacations.
This documentary owes its name to the Hippocratic Oath. An ethical commitment that doctors make after graduating and that guides them in the practice of their profession. With The oath We moved to a small hospital in the town of Maragua, near Mount Kenya, with which Cirugía Solidaria has collaborated since 2017. The audiovisual work is a journey full of potholes and tears through the mission that the organization carried out in the African country in June 2023.
Martínez, its director, is an experienced publicist who has participated in other humanitarian action campaigns such as Pills against the pain of others, of which he is the creator, and has been the director of six other documentaries. “My goal is for the viewer to want to be part of this,” he adds. For him it is essential to feel the suffering of others. “The day we stop doing it we will have failed as a society,” he says in a conversation with EL PAÍS. The film has just begun its festival tour, and in September it will premiere on Filmin.
Africa is surgery outside the operating room
José Manuel Rodríguez, anesthetist at Solidarity Surgery
The campaigns that this NGO develops take place once or twice a year and between 20 and 30 people participate. For Víctor Soria, a 58-year-old veteran surgeon who practices at the Morales Meseguer Hospital in Murcia, and one of the protagonists of the documentary, it was his first time in an operating room far from home. “You go with the expectation of helping as many people as possible, but you also travel with fears,” he says by phone. That fear of the unknown, for example, of hard days that have nothing to do with what he does in the public hospital where he works. “It is the equivalent of three consecutive days in Spain,” he remembers.
Another fear is the one assumed by the anesthetist José Manuel Rodríguez in the film: “Africa is surgery outside the operating room.” By this he means that the rooms where they operate are actually adapted rooms that do not resemble the fully equipped operating rooms in Spanish hospitals. “We work in an environment that is not ours,” he maintains.
Operate on a “huge” tumor with limited means
Beyond recording a surgery, the director was confident that something unforeseen would happen that he could film in order to convey that emotion that he himself felt those days while accompanying the aid workers. And it happened. One afternoon a 35-year-old patient appeared at the hospital with a breast tumor of “enormous” size who urgently needed blood so that it could be removed. The doctors who were working at that time and who had a blood group compatible with that of the patient donated without hesitation. “The transfusion scene defines the soul of this mission,” Martínez justifies. He suggests that in Spain it would be “unthinkable” for such a situation to occur. “In Spain we have a blood bank, but not there. We donated our blood so that a patient would not die,” Soria alleges.
The doctors of Cirugía Solidaria have noticed an increase in the incidence of cancer in the countries in which they work. An operation like the one performed on this patient has a value between 8,000 and 9,000 euros in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. “They arrive with tumors in a very advanced state because there is no easy access to radiotherapy treatments,” says Martínez. In addition to tumors that look like “soccer balls”, the ailments that patients most often present with are goiters or hernias. “It is a real drama for them because having such exaggerated sizes, they cannot work and prevent them from leading a normal life,” says Soria.
The oath It not only shows testimonies of battles like this one where surgeons are protagonists. The statements of the midwife Chintina Martínez or the neurologist Ana Morales reflect what the campaigns in Africa entail. “I can’t explain the connection I had with a woman during a birth in the middle of the night. She looked at me and I knew how she felt, she crouched down and I crouched down with her,” says the midwife. Meanwhile, the neurologist remembers that “in the last consultation, of 35 patients, about 16 came with cancer.” “We can only solve infectious diseases with pills, other ailments need long-term treatments. Of course you cry,” she confesses.
![Midwife Chintina Martínez cares for a patient in this frame from 'El Juramento'.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/GXUUZB2CWNB4XON7NFPEYQF7AY.jpg?auth=05b0b3b81f7e557a976be650133829524a630cdadf3295da9ad725369cee69fb&width=414)
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Victorio Torres, pediatrician and president of the Association HIV (who works on health projects in Kenya, especially related to the eradication of AIDS), recognizes in the documentary that the objective of the trips to Africa is to achieve self-sufficiency of the local medical system. “We noticed improvements. The involvement of African healthcare workers has increased,” she says. The doctors from Cirugía Solidaria work with them hand in hand during the missions, providing them with training, and some have even traveled to Spain to attend conferences on free and universal healthcare. Torres warns that free campaigns like this are the only opportunity that many people have to be cured, since healthcare in most of Africa “requires private insurance.” “We only go to places where we can guarantee patients that they will be able to access medical check-ups at no cost and for that we need the support of the country’s Government. There are many places where we have not been able to go because the Administration cannot guarantee free consultations for the sick,” he explains.
For 24 years, 108 collaborators have participated in the 150 Solidarity Surgery campaigns. They have performed nearly 7,000 surgical interventions and more than 20,000 medical consultations in Africa. “This works because we are a family. By looking at each other we know what we think, the hard core is true friends and that is strength,” details the anesthetist Rodríguez in the documentary. “There is a very moving component in the group. It’s all very intense, it’s exciting to experience this with them on the field,” adds Martínez enthusiastically.
It is June 23, 2023 and the doctors of Cirugía Solidaria gather around a bonfire to celebrate the night of San Juan, say goodbye to the mission and celebrate the success of the campaign. “After so many years they still get excited doing the same thing,” reveals Martínez. Personally, to the director of The oath There is something that fills him with pride: “They are the same health workers who cure us in our hospitals.”
![Two doctors from Cirugía Solidaria said goodbye to the campaign on the night of San Juan 2023, in a still from 'El Juramento'.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/HWA3TXBFNNH7FA4GHEP7B3GBOI.jpg?auth=63ea42ef973583044e36045b7914809e1409251b1273a6118c38ee7219087731&width=414)
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