'Docs on a Mission' -- Scott and Kathy Deasy '72 -- Prepare for 11th Visit to Afghanistan

July 21, 2008

July 21, 2008, Greencastle, Ind. - "In addition to sharing 36 years of marriage, three grown sons and three granddaughters, Scott and Kathy Deasy also share a profession: obstetrics and gynecology," begins a feature in Flagstaff, Arizona's Daily Sun on the two 1972 graduates of DePauw University. "Since spring 2003, they have also shared another passion: Training doctors in Afghanistan to tend correctly to the critical health needs of the women in that war-torn nation. On Sept. 17, they will fly to Afghanistan to begin a yearlong project training 12 Afghan doctors in up-to-date techniques." (photo courtesy: Dana Felthauser/Arizona Daily Sun) 

Betsey Bruner notes, "Between them, the Deasys have visited the country 11 times ... The Deasys' medical efforts in Afghanistan have been logistically supported by HOPE Worldwide, an international charity that recruits staff and volunteers to deliver community-based services to the poor and needy."

In Afghanistan, the couple will train Ob/Gyn doctors to care properly for women. "One woman in 50 will die in her pregnancy; multiply that by the number of pregnancies a woman will have," Dr. Kathy (Scott) Deasy tells the newspaper. "One in 17 will died between the ages of 15 and 44 of a pregnancy complication. It's the leading cause of death in childbearing years -- not heart attacks, not car accidents -- it's pregnancy."

Dr. Scott Deasy recently returned from a two-week trip to Kabul, Afghanistan, a place he and his wife last visited a year ago. "In some ways, conditions were better," he reports. "There were scary bottlenecks in the road a year ago. Now, they've resurfaced the major roads in Kabul. There's also a much greater presence of Afghan troops and police, and they seem to be monitoring the situation."

The story reveals that the Deasys -- who both work at North Country Health Care Center -- met "while they were in college at DePauw University in Indiana."

Access the complete text, headlined "Docs on a mission," at the Daily Sun's Web site.

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