One Doctor’s Story of Teaching and Healing in Angola
By Grace Oei ’04, issue editor
Published in the fall/winter 2023 ALUMNI JOURNAL
Annelise Olson ’04 had a busy day ahead of her. As the general surgeon on call, she had a full schedule in the OR. She also had to round on her post-op patients and finish seeing the new consults, all while supervising her interns. One of her interns beckoned her to come over to the radiology station. It was Alexandrina’s brain CT scan. Dr. Olson looked at the images. There was an abscess in the cerebellum and hydrocephalus, presumably acute. Typically, this would warrant a consult with neurosurgery, but the nearest neurosurgeon was many miles away and unavailable.
Dr. Olson practices in Angola, a country on the Atlantic coast of sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Olson knew she wanted to practice medicine in Africa from an early age. As a daughter of missionary parents, she lived in Portugal before attending college in South Dakota. After receiving her medical degree from Loma Linda School of Medicine, Dr. Olson finished a general surgery residency at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She underwent additional training by completing an International and Rural Surgery fellowship and the two-year post-residency program with World Medical Mission.
Dr. Olson then accepted a call to Angola and, since 2012, has been serving as a general surgeon in the Centro Evangélico de Medicina do Lubango (CEML). Located in Lubango, the second largest city in the country, CEML is a 55-bed hospital that treats every patient regardless of their ability to pay. CEML’s services are badly needed as Angola has a severe shortage of medical professionals. In 2019, the Angolan government estimated only 17 physicians per 100,000 inhabitants.1 (By comparison, the CDC calculated that California had 273.4 physicians in patient care per 100,000 in the same year.2) Since joining CEML, Dr. Olson has helped the hospital expand its services, especially in general and selected subspecialty surgical treatment. In addition to surgical services, the hospital provides 24-hour emergency care, inpatient care, and obstetrical care to the community. CEML is also a teaching hospital. CEML has offered a one-year internship for graduating medical students for several years. This past year, the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS) approved CEML as a surgical residency training site. Their first two residents will start in January 2024. In addition to her other duties, Dr. Olson is the residency program director.
On this day, though, Dr. Olson pushed aside thoughts of paperwork and other administrative tasks. Alexandrina needed to have her abscess drained. She had presented a week earlier, complaining of a severe headache and fever. Despite treatment for cerebral malaria and meningitis, Alexandrina started seizing, lapsing into unconsciousness. CEML does not have a CT scanner, so the team arranged for her to get a head CT at the public hospital in town, which took five days. Looking at the films, Dr. Olson took a deep breath. She made notes and wrote down measurements. This would be a delicate and tricky operation. The next day, Dr. Olson took Alexandrina into the OR for a craniotomy to drain the abscess. After drilling a small hole in the skull, she found the abscess with a needle and pulled out 10 mL of pus. She placed an external ventricular drain and admitted Alexandrina to the post-operative ward. After a week of continued antibiotics and prayer, Alexandrina woke up and began her journey back to full recovery.
Long-term mission work is challenging, yet Dr. Olson remains committed to helping Angolans access the healthcare they need to improve their quality of life. In addition to neurosurgery, she repairs rectovaginal and vesicovaginal fistulas for women whose bodies have suffered the sequelae of difficult childbirth, provides total hip arthroplasties, and femur repairs for Angolans who fall or have hip joints destroyed by tuberculosis or sickle disease. She also treats crocodile bites as Angola’s rivers are home to large Nile crocodiles. Dr. Olson appreciates prayers as she continues to care, teach, and minister to her community in Angola.
Endnotes
“Angola-Healthcare.” International Trade Administration October 13, 2019, https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/angola-healthcare.
“Data Table for Figure 16: Number of Physicians in Patent Care Per 100,000 Residents Population, By State: United States.” NIH: National Library of Medicine, 2018, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK569310/table/ch2.tab16/.
For another story about Dr. Olson on page 34
Dr. Oei is director of the Center for Christian Bioethics. She is a pediatric intensivist at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital, a clinical ethics consultant for Loma Linda University Health, and serves on the faculty for LLUSM.