A five month-old girl named Sangai, who needed urgent medical treatment for a flesh-eating condition, has been saved by a Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot in Liberia.
Little Sangai was also suffering from hydrocephalus – a build-up of fluid on the brain. The condition, if left untreated, can damage brain tissue.
Fortunately, if treated, both conditions are curable. But healthcare in the Liberian countryside is extremely limited, leaving Sangai’s life in the balance.
A journey from her isolated village near the border with Guinea and Sierra Leone to Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, would mean a challenging ten-hour journey by motorbike – one that Sangai was unlikely to survive in the best of circumstances. Now that the wet season had arrived, the treacherous roads would make things even harder.
However, MAF Pilot Roy Rissanen was able to collect Sangai and Blessing, her mum, and fly them safely to the capital. ‘She was extremely ill,’ Roy confirmed.
The life-saving flight took Roy and co-pilot Steven Biggs just one hour.
As soon as they landed, MAF staff drove them to Eternal Love Winning Africa Hospital, a medical facility run by Christian missionaries. Margot Biggs, who works there and is married to MAF Pilot Steven, says Sangai is now doing well. ‘She’s such a little fighting champion. Thank you to everyone involved in Sangai’s care, and for the prayers and support for her whole family.’
After one emergency medevac, two operations and 42 days in hospital, Sangai has been discharged, with her sores still being treated as an outpatient.
Meanwhile, in Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea (PNG) the grateful recipients of recent MAF flights include a mother who’d had triplets and needed post-natal help, a woman who was suffering from pregnancy complications, a man who had injured himself after falling from a tree, and a young woman whose arms had been wounded due to domestic violence.
A villager from Pyarulama, PNG, who witnessed the wounded woman’s medevac, commented, ‘MAF is our lifeline, we don’t have another means of travel!’
