It was one Monday evening in the early Spring of 2012 in my dental office when just before leaving that day, I was told that my patient, Cheryl Flah-Kiahon, would be still coming that day to pick up a home dental device prior to moving back to Africa. 

As a very nice and conscientious patient of our office Cheryl was taking good care of her and her family’s teeth and, speaking accent free, I never knew she was not from New York or another part of the USA.  I was surprised because everyone wants to come to USA and no one would go back ... and now Cheryl is returning back to Africa? 

I wanted to see her and find out her plans so I waited for her to arrive.

Well, she came and I asked her about Africa, being personally interested in that since the charity of our MOSA - Medical Oxygen Society of the Americas (www.mosao2.org) was expressly designed for medical and dental assistance for Africa - AfricaMedica.org. Cheryl told me many things about Liberia, about its climate, people and nature but also about the civil war recently concluded. 

I knew personally something about it, just in general terms, however the total destruction of the country, its devastated infrastructure and the unimaginable sufferings during the war were not clear to me until Cheryl presented the real picture. In preparation for her departure she was making sure that the family dental health was up to date since in Liberia there are no dentists as she informed me. 

In doing my homework, I found information on the internet showing that one single physician is providing medical service to over 100K people if and when medicine and equipment are available.  Dentistry is now a luxury of the past and the education came to a standstill for over a decade.  Then Cheryl sent me the letter.  With her permission I annexed it to my writing.  It expresses much better in so few words than any report on the internet can provide – the tragic results of the civil war and the struggle of a nation to recover. 

We know of many regions in Africa desperately needing a helping hand and how can someone decide where the need is deeper?  Where the efforts should be streamed to, etc?  But now the letter from Cheryl together with her verbally expressed commitment to help and contribute to her nation’s recovery did move me to the point of my own commitment. 

Over the last three weeks, different logistic plans have been discussed.  It became evident that for volunteer medical groups to temporarily donate their time and practice in Liberia a location in the form of a clinic base must be established.Furthermore the dentists and physicians from here will operate with substantially increased efficiency if qualified local help or at least semi-trained assistants would be available. 

Educational programs and schools have been completely devastated by the civil war and presently such qualified help and personnel cannot be found. A close analysis however shows that the creation of a learning center – an educational facility – capable of operating over the internet with an online educational curriculum would represent the only viable and realistic option.  Utilizing today’s webinar technology the instructor’s can deliver real time training and in the future such curricula can be perfected and a complete training could produce an education online possibly better and certainly faster than the traditional one. 

Having Cheryl as the director our newly planned MOSA Institute for Medicine, Science and Education of Liberia, in the capital Monrovia, will definitely be a great success.  Her enthusiasm, dedication to the cause and energy will be an inspiration for all students and anyone involved in the project as it was and continues to be for myself.  Cheryl’s letter is an eminent piece of information and definitive inspiration of this project and as said before, was published here with her permission, to continue to inspire and motivate in the future.

Charitable information will play in the future the key role in survival of any charity.  It is a documented and logical statement when one considers that the charitable movement in the world has been severely effected by the general economic recession.  We are very aware of the gravity of the Liberian situation and of the fact that their recovery cannot wait until the world recession will slowly and eventually pass and the charitable donations will flow again generously as before. 

It is also a part of our commitment to inform our website visitors as much as we can of the present situation in Liberia – the needs, the possibilities to help, the logistics of organizing medical volunteer groups but at the same time also of our developments and hopefully of our soon to come results and successes.

For all the above reasons and many others too numerous and complex to enumerate here, we extend to everyone out there in the world, but in particular to our medical professionals, the most stringent appeal for help and commitment to. . .our medical project for Liberia in answer to Cheryl’s letter and appeal.

Dr Florian Braich DDS PhD

MOSA Director

Medical Oxygen Society of the Americas

www.mosao2.org