As the old adage goes, "Give a village fish, and you have fed them for a day. Teach them to fish, and you have fed them for life." That's the philosophy Dr. John Lubicky of Shriners Hospital in Chicago and his team of medical professionals is putting into practice. The result, hundreds of Lithuanian children with extreme spinal deformities are getting increased medical treatment, while they would have otherwise gone without any treatment at all.

The story of Dr. Lubicky's outreach program starts back in the early 1990s when a group called the "Lithuanian Children's Hope" paid him a visit. The group was in the process of brining Lithuanian children with illnesses and disabilities to the United States for treatment. Chicago has a large Lithuanian population. In fact, the only other city in the world with more Lithuanians living there is Vilnius, Lithuania.

According to Dr. Lubicky, "Medical treatment there was bad. But for children, it was even worse, especially for children with disabilities. At the scoliosis school in Siauliai, you could see the natural progression of scoliosis because the kids there were never given effective treatment." For two years, Dr. Lubicky treated children brought to him from Lithuania. "The kids that came over had just horrible deformities. I don't think I ever saw a curve less than 100 degrees," adds Dr. Lubicky.

After seeing these children for two years, Lithuanian Children's Hope then approached Dr. Lubicky with a new plan. Instead of bringing the children of Lithuania to Dr. Lubicky, the group wanted Dr. Lubicky to go to the children. Dr. Lubicky agreed, "I went over there and spent four days. During those four days, I must have seen two to three hundred children."

After making several of these visits and establishing a relationship with the Vilnius University Children's Hospital, Dr. Lubicky came back to the United States and pulled together a medical team of surgeons, residents, and nurses. Once formed, the team then spent nearly six-months gathering supplies and donations, before taking their own vacation time to travel to Lithuania. The compact team carried all the medical supplies and instruments on to the airplane, so that they would not have a problem getting them through customs or incur any shipping costs. With 30-boxes weighing around 75-pounds each, the journey was anything but easy.

Once the team arrived at the hospital, they were engaged in a rigorous schedule, getting to the hospital before eight, with Dr. Lubicky staying until well after 7:00 p.m. discussing current and past cases with the on-staff Lithuanian physicians. As Dr. Lubicky puts it, "The attending staff meets with me every night to go over cases they have had throughout the year. I feel so proud of that, because educating them is really the thing we should be doing there."

Dr. Lubicky's team has been traveling to Lithuania in this fashion, taking their own personal vacation time to volunteer, gathering all of the supplies through donations, and hand carrying all the equipment since 1993. "We started going twice a year. Now we go just once, and what we do there has changed a little bit. Before we would go and try to do as many cases as we could, but now we try to pick one or two areas where they need help and concentrate on educating the physicians on that particular treatment." Though the actual trips have been cut back, the communication between Dr. Lubicky and the Lithuanian physicians has significantly increased. They now talk on a weekly basis. "They'll send me information about the cases they are having problems with. They'll digitize the x-rays so I can look at them and advise them," adds Dr. Lubicky.

With Dr. Lubicky leading the charge, education has become the philosophy of this outreach program. "To go over there and do a few cases, that's not really the thing to do for them. It doesn't really help them in their day-to-day effort. What helps is providing them with the skills and knowledge, so that they can do it." Since Dr. Lubicky and his team of medical professionals have been working with the staff at the Vilnius University Children's Hospital, the facility has received millions of dollars worth of equipment and supplies. "Things are still not great, but they are much better now than they ever were before."

If you would like to donate to Dr. Lubicky and his teams' efforts, please contact:

Published: April 18, 2002

Updated: February 17, 2005

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