Kaiser Permanente Redwood City Physician named "Woman of Influence"

Dr. Debra Matityahu and daughter aid African women, healthcare.

            It was supposed to be a family vacation with brief interludes of medical volunteering, but for Dr Debra Matityahu, Chief of Service (Doctor-Patient Communication) at Kaiser Permanente Redwood City, it became a mission to help a Kenyan clinic and also make lives better for African women.

            Dr. Matityahu and her teenage daughter started “A Little 4 A Lot”, a Peninsula non-profit aimed at helping physically-disabled, once-ostracized women in Kenya return to school or learn a trade.

            “I was doing medical missionary work in Eldoret, Kenya, assisting with the repair of obstetric fistulas,” says Dr. Matityahu, explaining that these are serious gynecologic tissue damages from prolonged obstructed labor.  “Village women usually can’t get a C-section to aid the delivery. So the baby dies, and after its removal, the mother is left with severe birth canal damage that causes uncontrollable leaking of urine and/or feces.”

            As a result, these women are shunned and ostracized until the fistula can be medically repaired. While Dr. Matityahu was assisting in doing just that at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya, her teenage daughter Arielle accompanied her in talking to the recovering women.  

            “Their stories were all the same: no school, no skills, no jobs,” says Dr. Matityahu.  Her daughter was shocked when she learned that one girl wanted to return to her local school but she could not afford the $24 it would cost to obtain a school uniform and shoes.

            “She said ‘Mom, give me your wallet! We could do so much here for so little.’”

            And that’s essentially how “A Little 4 A Lot” started.  Since 2012, she and her daughter have raised more than $20,000 to help recovering obstetric fistula patients.

But that’s not all: During her medical volunteering in Africa, Dr. Matityahu saw that there’s no end of medical needs in Kenya.  So she enlisted her scrub techs at the Kaiser Permanente in Redwood City hospital to save clean, unused medical supplies rather than tossing them out.

In the doctor’s locker room, Dr. Matityahu showed bags of supplies, all gathered and saved by the scrub techs, which will be shipped to Kenya. “We send sutures, scalpel blades, surgical gowns, gloves, and gauze.  These are all items that are unused but no longer in their sterile packages.”

Because of that, Kaiser Permanente medical safety rules dictate the material can’t be used.  Dr. Matityahu explains that the packages could have been opened for a surgical procedure that was canceled. 

“We only ship medicine that hasn’t expired and surgical supplies that are unused and clean,” she says.  “Thanks to Direct Relief International, we are able to have the supplies shipped to Eldoret, Kenya for free.” 

            Dr. Matityahu credits her father for her spirit of helping.

            “He always said ‘Do unto others’,” she recalls.  She says it’s the best advice she ever received.  In the Hebrew tradition, helping one person helps the world.

            (The website for her 501(c) 3 program is www.ALittle4ALot.com  and donations can be made at the site)

            (The Silicon Valley Business Journal features a listing of this year’s “Women of Influence”winners Dr. Debra Matityahu’s listing can be found here:  http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/print-edition/2013/04/05/women-of-influence-dr-debra-matityahu.html   )