Man on a mission

QUOTE:

I believe in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man. -- Dr. C. John Ritter

By Sam Blackwell ~ Southeast Missourian

Treating the sick in Third World countries renewed Dr. C. John Ritter's love for medicine.

"It's the way it was 50 years ago, the way it was when I started," says the 64-year-old retired Cape Girardeau internist.

No insurance companies and no lawyers ever called him in Barbuda, Mozambique, in the Mexican highlands, in the Liberian tropical rainforest or in Honduras. They were replaced by "the joy of a mother whose child gets better and doesn't die," he says.

"...It was maximum good with the least hassle."

Ironically, treating the sick now has left Ritter too ill to undertake anymore missions abroad.

After two bouts with malaria contracted in Africa, his liver function has deteriorated so much that he may need a transplant. The second case of malaria took him to a Rome hospital for five days. His blood volume dropped to less than one-half normal, and he was fainting.

The type of malaria he contracted is the most deadly but does not flare back up as other forms do. He had congenital liver problems and has diabetes that made the malaria even worse.

In nearly a decade of medical missions beginning in 1993, Ritter and his wife, Marcia Southard-Ritter, have lived alternate lives very different from their comfortable existence in Cape Girardeau. In the Mexican state of Chihuahua, they worked high in the mountains with the Talamahara Indians, who run 100-mile races and are considered a national treasure. During three months in Mozambique in 1997, they treated people haunted by starvation and land mines.

"We have seen the aftermath of what has been going on in Afghanistan," he said. "The women and children are the ones who really suffer."

They survived a night of insurrection in Liberia in which 600 people were killed in the streets of the capital, Monrovia. There, they also had to compete with traditional healers, who might prescribe breaking the leg of a chicken to mend your own broken leg. On the Honduran island of Roatan, they saw 40 to 60 patients a day.

Most often the facilities were rudimentary. Ritter is an internist, not a surgeon, but surgery often was required of him.

The hospital in Ganta, Liberia, had electricity only from 7 p.m. until midnight. Forty-one percent of the patients admitted to the hospital had malaria. The complication for children was anemia. Those with cerebral malaria had seizures and fits, and some died.

Screens for hospital

Marcia, a nurse who ran the hospital as an administrator, solicited grants to put screens on the hospital's windows to keep the mosquitoes out. Ritter is proud that the five to seven children being lost per week was reduced to two deaths during the entire three months he ran the pediatrics ward.

Ritter himself took preventative medicine but still got malaria from mosquito bites. "I probably was getting bit by mosquitoes every day," he says.

Malaria does not occur in the United States but is the No. 1 killer in the world. The symptoms are chills, fever, bone aches, nausea and muscle aches.

Growing up in Jackson, Mo., Ritter wanted to be a conservation agent. But the girl he was in love with said she wouldn't marry a conservation agent; she would consider marrying a doctor.

Ritter's mother liked that idea, too. That's how he wound up at the University of Missouri studying medicine.

He promised God that if he made it through medical school, he would return the blessings.

"I believe in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man," he said. "I feel I have been given lots of blessings."

Among them are five children: Robin Hackett, Emilie Clardy, Stephen Southard, Ben Ritter and Dan Southard, and five grandchildren.

Ritter's first wife, Donna, died of cancer in 1985. He married Marcia in 1986. She is the former vice president of patient care at St. Francis Medical Center.

A greater good

He had a good career as an internist in Cape Girardeau but for years talked about wanting to use his medical skills for a greater good.

"Marcia said, 'I'm tired of you talking,'" he recalled. "'Are you going to do it or not?'"

Their first mission in 1993 was to Barbuda, an island off the coast of Venezuela with 1,500 inhabitants. "We thought we were roughing it," he said. "We found out later we didn't know what we were talking about."

Barbuda had poor facilities but also had no exotic diseases. The Ritters returned to Barbuda a number of times.

In 1997, the Methodist Church's Volunteers in Mission program arranged for the Ritters to spend three months in Mozambique, where they needed two interpreters and treated starvation, malnutrition and wounds caused by land mines. While they were there, 16 people were killed when a tractor hit a land mine.

"We think land mines have no place in this world," he says.

In 1998 they went to Liberia to re-establish the hospital at Ganta near the capital of Monrovia shortly after an insurrection. Many of the soldiers were just boys, he says.

Liberia is rich with lumber, gold and diamonds, but the children were dying of malnutrition. "Malnutrition is like measles," Southard-Ritter said.

Most don't walk until they are 4 years old.

Great contrasts

The contrasts between life there and life in the U.S. are distressing.

When the hospital ran out of food one time, he donated $100 that fed 1,000 people for four days. Returning home from that trip, Ritter spent $180 taking his family to dinner at a local steakhouse.

"Children don't realize how blessed they are to have been born in America," he says.

In Liberia, Ritter visited a leper colony run by nuns. He expected the lepers to resent his intrusion.

"They were so happy that someone would come in and touch them," Ritter said, tears filling his eyes.

They would be back in Liberia now if they could be.

"We have given our hearts to the people of that country," Ritter said.

Now that his health problems have made medical missions abroad impractical, the Ritters are concentrating more on local problems. They are volunteering at the Family Resource Center, which provides centralized social services in south Cape Girardeau, including after-school activities, health education and screenings and referral, and services for seniors.

The Ritters often speak to civic and church groups about their missions and are eager to do more presentations. Last Sunday they gave a program at Grace United Methodist Church encouraging people to give the $50 a year that will enable a Liberian child to go to school.

"Everywhere we went, children were hungry for schooling," Ritter said.

The Cape Girardeau Rotary Club donated $3,000 to buy surgical kits and other medical supplies for the hospital in Liberia.

For most of Ritter's life, his primary concerns were making money and raising his family. The work he has done in God's name feels different.

"It has given a different meaning to my life," Ritter said. "I feel it's something that needs to be done. It's just good."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182