KALAI MATHEE, MSc, PhD

Founding Chair & Associate Professor

Department of Molecular Microbiology and Infectious Diseases

College of Medicine, Florida International University, Miami, USA

www.fiu.edu/~matheek

notes/LETTERS

Dr. William Smiddy Regarding Robert J Smiddy Award
No	Comments
1	October 8, 2009 Joe Leigh Simpson MD Executive Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine Florida International University RE: Kalai Mathee, Ph. D. Dear Dr. Simpson, It is my privilege to write this memo that documents Dr. Mathee’s role and continued service in the Robert J. Smiddy Memorial Prize. In the aftermath of his tragic passing she healthily channeled her efforts into establishing this prize. Not only was this a gracious gesture toward our family, but it was an ingenious way of demonstrating to her lab students a way of constructively harnessing their desires to pay tribute to one of their colleagues. It stood as a model for the entire Florida International University community of what great organization, leadership, and inspiration she represents. Far from establishing this and forgetting it once the grief subsided, she has sustained it with her attention and initiative in social fundraisers and encouraging applications from other Honors Biology students. Now 5 years old, this prize has reproduced into a second prize targeted towards the nascent medical school. This too is fitting and proper as Robert likely would have pursued a career in medicine and his heart was strongly oriented towards FIU. Her academic prowess is obvious to anyone who peruses the genetics literature, her compassion is demonstrated in this project, and her organizational skills are manifest in its success. The foundation, however, represents her full-fledged commitment to encouraging original thinking and dedication among all levels of students that she welcomes, challenges, and encourages. There is clearly a reason that the leadership of the new medical school has invited her into a leadership role. I look forward to continuing to work with her on this prize and future endeavors. With the greatest sincerity and thanks, William E. Smiddy, MD Professor of Ophthalmology Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Liberians Students
No	Comments
1	Date: 7/6/07 From: Philip Ireland <posone31@yahoo.com Dear Dr. Mathee, I sure hope you arrived safely and that your husband recieved you in ONE PIECE. Doc, you sacrificing your time, energy, and money to teach, motivate, encourage, and love us will certainly NOT be forgotten and will go a very long way. We have already begun to miss you and even though we were not able to make you promise to return, we know that you consented in your heart. May God bless you and yours and we look forward eagerly to the Noble Peace Prize to be won by you. Your Son, Philip
2	Date 7/6/07 From: Kanagasabai Udhayashankar <shanky201@yahoo.com> Dear Dr Mathee I meant to write this sooner, but the net has been down. I wish I could say this in Tamil but i guess English will have to do. Thank you so much for teaching us. We learned so much from you, some of us have been sleeping and you woke us up. You inspired us, not only to reach higher and strive harder but to also be better people with a thought for others. Thank you again. We are happy to that you have reached safely. Here things are pretty much the same. We are expecting our grade sheets this week which means that first semester will officially have ended. Please extend my regards to Dr Weeks And your Husband. Sincerely yours Shankar
3	Date: 7/24/07 From: "Moses J. Soka" mjsoka@yahoo.com Dear Dr. Mathee, I hope all is great back in the US. On Thursday we’ll celebrate Liberia’s Independence, 1847, July 26 with high hopes for a bright future for our Country. I should have written earlier. But we are very busy – taking exams. All the professors are pushing extremely hard o teach all they had o teach during the 6 months semester within this month and administer their final exams now or early August. But we are all coping as usual – trying very hard to all become doctors someday. Please pray along with us. Your lectures were very helpful. It’s like you knew exactly what we needed to know in bacteriology. Most of our bacteriology lectures are a review of what you taught. Each of us is required to give a presentation on an assigned topic. I gave a one hour power point presentation on meningitis. It was colorful. Your visit to the President in addition to numerous strives we’ve made before your visit may likely yield some good results. Her Excellency sent a communication to the Minister of Health expressing her “concern about the neglect of the Medical College”. She asked him to do an assessment make achievable recommendations to her. He in turn forwarded the communication to Dean Freeman. We are praying hard this achieve positive results. I must once again thank you for your plead on our behalf. On Wednesday morning, 18JUL at about 5:15AM a photo journalist from one of the local papers met Doedeh, Catakaw and me studying on the OPD floor of neighboring Catholic Hospital where we normally go (if allowed), to read the night over.  He was disheartened about what he saw and gave us a photo which came out in the Monday 23JUL edition of the paper. He called for assistance for the school. It was cool. I hope the efforts you are making back in the US to assist us will yield fruitful results. We are looking with high hopes to this. Just any help that can facilitate our study will be appreciated highly directly by us and by the many Liberians who will benefit from the care we’ll provide upon graduation as doctors. The rainy season is here now and studying under the street lights is no longer an option. Yet we are coping very well as we have always done. Dr. Mathee once again I am so grateful for the knowledge you provided us. Our appreciation for your contribution in making us ideal doctors cannot be expressed in words.  If we had only five professors like you and Dr. Weeks I am quite confident we would all graduate in the required five years instead of the nine years +/- more we now spend. I hope others will follow your philanthropic example. Oops! Let me not take much of your time away from your hard work. But I wish you success in your endeavor to be transferred to the Medical school. Extend my greetings to your family and students. I usually visit the café to check my mails once a week as a result of busy schedule. See ya, Soka
4	Date: 11/16/07 From: Celina Okwokmo smallfacec@yahoo.com Hello dr mathee, Sorry for not writing earlier. Thank you for the money you sent, we really appreciate it and everything you have done for us as a class. Thanks to the effort of you and others who spoke on our behalf to the president, we now have running water and electricity {at night} on campus. May the lord bless you and your family. Celina m. okwumuo
5	Date: 11/21/07 From "d. kollie Catakaw" <daileykollie@yahoo.com> Dr. Mathee Thank very much for the money for me in particular and in general the entire class. You are a professor and a mother to all of us. Very sorry that I have not written you since your departure from Liberia. It was due to closure of my box. I just opened this presently. Its your student D. Kollie Catakaw
6	Date: 11/21/07 From Finda mayah fmayah@yahoo.com Hi Dr. Mathee, So good to hear from you. Praise God you arrived home safely and has started your usual activities. Sorry I could not be on line with you since your departure, but again thanks so much for the sacrifice you made to us and to Liberia as a whole; may you be blessed. As per the collection of info, i think the guys have placed the project on a hold due to outstanding examinations. We are determined to get there; indeed we'll surely arrive. Thanks for the courage, you inspired us alot. Take care of yourself. Talk to you again. Finda Mayah
7	Date: 11/21/07 From: John Doedeh jdoedeh@yahoo.com Hi Dr. Mathee, How are you? I hope fine. On behalf of the THIRD YEAR CLASS, I want to say a big, big, big, mighty BIG THANKS to you for the five hundred united states dollars sent to the class through Mr. Weeks. We do appreciate what you have done for us. Annette and Laurent want to the status of their performace, i.e, they kindly want you to send their grades. I keep in touch. It's John S. Doedeh President YR III
8	Date: 7/23/07 From: Adolphus Yeiah adolphusyeiah@yahoo.com Dear Dr. Mathee, Sorry for taking so long to write you. Thank God for your safe arrival back home. I guess by now you've transfered to the Medical School. It must be quite challenging to pioneer such a demanding field; but I am confident that you're up to the task. Dr. Mathee, I thank God for encountering you in my long academic and professional journey. You've had a very big and positive impact on me personally. Your determination and urge to succeed against the odds, spurs me on against any challenges-of which there are many in our setting. Your coming to teach us helped me to see beyond myself and perceive my education and profession in the light of reaching out to others in greater needs than myself. Again, I thank you for coming and please keep in touch. Although I am not a female, I very much appreciate your achievements and I see you as a good example to keep me stimulated in the face of any odds. The class is going closer to closing for the semester so that we can begin to take final examinations. Hopefully, most courses will be completed by the end of this month or early next month. Our printer is going fine. I think the historians are working on the class history to forward to you. Hope to hear from you some time soon. I miss you. God bless you and guide you. Your student, Adolphus Yeiah "Elite Class"
9	Date: 8/3/08 From: Celina Okwokmo smallfacec@yahoo.com Dear Dr. Mathee, I recieved the Microbiology book you sent by Dr. Kennedy.Thanks a million. It is of great help especially as we are about to start clinical studies next month ( hopefully). Thanks also for the books you sent for the school, we highly appreciate them. May God richly bless you and your family. Please extend greetings to Dr. Weeks on behalf of our class. CELINA
10	From: Adolphus Yeiah adolphusyeiah@yahoo.com Date: 9/25/08 Dear Dr. Mathee, I must first tell you that I feel very guilty for not communicating with you more regularly than just once or twice a year. Please accept my apologies. Thanks for all the work you've done and continue to do opening a new med school at FIU. It is a milestone! Thank you very much for the $400 for the class funds. And the idea of participating in the medical outreach with the visiting team in February next year is a great idea. I will encourage my classmates to take advantage of the opportunity when the team comes. At Dogliotti, some changes are taking place since your landmark visit last year. We now have night time electricity to study on, the professors are becoming a little more regular, thanks to salary increases by the Government. Our class, the Elite Class, have begun clinical rotations since August 18, 2008. Our number is still 16 and we pray and hope to graduate with this number. It is indeed, hectic but very rewarding, engaging in these clinical activities. The perennial problems of books, transportation and food continue to haunt us. But we shall continue to meet these challenges, inspired by model figures like you. Your sincerely Adolphus T. Yeiah
11	Date: 11/11/08 From: Adolphus Yeiah adolphusyeiah@yahoo.com Dear Dr. Mathee, We the Elite Class, today, received the $500.00 that you sent for us. Thank you very much for taking so much in our class and showing us so much love through these gestures. Thanks also for the books. We will strive to justify your love for us by studying hard regardless of whatever may be the situation, and become the elite doctors with a difference. The class president got in contact with the medical team scheduled for February 2009, and plans are ongoing to include the class in the outreach. We are very glad as a class that you are so gracious towards us and we continue to look to you for more guidance regardless of the distance between us. How is the Medical School? I guess you've kicked off by now, and you must be very busy.Your screening for selection of students must have been very hectic, considering the volume of applications, but I know that you and your team are up to the task. Here, we are now in the 3rd year and we have just completed the 2nd month of our four-month rotation. We hope to complete in December and do our exams in January next year. We hardly have time now for ourselves to attend to our personal affairs because of the very compact clinical and class schedules and study demands. Therefore, the money you sent is going to make a world of a difference for our class for the next month or so, especially, in terms of food. Again, thank you very much and keep in touch Your student, Adolphus T. Yeiah
12	Date: 8/21/09 From: "Moses J. Soka" <mjsoka@yahoo.com> Hi Dr. Mathee, How are you and your family doing? How is your job? I hope everything is well. It’s great mailing you after so long and just wanted to say hi. So much have happened since my last mail to you. I am doing fine. Everyone is well and doing great. We had a full 6 weeks of hectic 3rd year exams that kept me locked up in my room with no access to email. Then as that was fading out, I had to leave for Gbarpolu, Grand Cape Mount, and Bomi Counties for almost a month long health facility survey for the Ministry of Health’s National Malaria Control Programs. I returned from that survey Almost three months ago, but then started my surgical rotation at Redemption Hospital where there is no internet service. We all don’t rotate at JFK Hospital since not all of our professors work at JFK Hospital.  I will be moving at JFK by September. Two weeks ago I along with four other classmates – Celina, Kormassa, Sweetsweet, and Adolphus – was in Buchanan for a week long free surgery outreach program along with two Liberian surgeons. In one week they performed 91 surgeries. We had a great experience. This long 3rd year semester finally ended with a 6 week long stressful exams. We all successfully passed the exams. We are now one third of the way in our fourth year clinical rotations. Hopefully within the next 11 months we would be completing our long study. The most stressful was the pediatrics clinical exam….not necessarily the most difficult…but the most stressful. We were at the JFK Hospital as early as 8:00GMT. We were first given 45 minutes each to do a comprehensive clinical history and an exhaustive head-to-toe pediatric physical examination of a pediatric patient randomly assigned, come up with a convincing working diagnosis and required investigations. After that we were each called in one at a time for 45 minutes of quizzing by a team of four physicians. The evaluation itself included a 10 minutes presentation of your findings, few questions on your presentation and findings. After that you are asked to do one regional physical examination of a pediatric patient, secondly a spot diagnosis (you are shown a pediatric patient for about 10 seconds without touching the patient or talking to them and then you make a diagnosis of the patient’s medical condition). Finally, you randomly pick a disease condition from a pile of folded papers and in 5 minutes comprehensively discuss the disease, leaving out only the management aspect (3rd year students are not responsible for treatment of patients). I was second to last to be called in. As I walked down the first floor of the hospital after my exam the time was already 0:01 GMT midnight. I had to wait for one of the professor to drop the last (Adolphus) and myself at the dormitories since there were already no taxi cabs on the streets. At the end of it all as the old professor walked along the ER in the darkness under the trees toward his van, he accidentally tripped over and fell almost flat in the concrete drainage in the yard just along the ER building and sustained deep lacerations to his left foot and palms and walked to his car in severe pain as my colleague and I helped him up. After a hectic day that was so pathetic that for a brief moment I forgot the earlier hectic moments and focused on just the old Professor. What did I think first? “Yeah!!!! This is not bad after all…..he just cruelly worked the hell of us just now”. I almost laughed…but I couldn’t. That would have been the end of my medical education in Liberia. Secondly when I saw blood draining down the Professor’s trousers….that broke me down. It was no longer fun. The Professor was in excruciating pain. I felt I was feeling the pain too. Some time in mid April I left on a 5 persons team for Cape Mount, Bomi, and Gbarpolu Counties for the health survey. We visited every health facility in every village in each of these counties. There were other teams assigned to other counties. Our work included assessing the malaria situation in each of these facilities, evaluate the health workers ability to do a good assessment of a patient and come up with the right diagnosis; assess the level of drugs and equipment available and needs. Today, the Ministry of Health has succeeded to assign at least one registered nurse to most of its 490 primary healthcare clinics facilities countrywide and in some of them a certified midwife. The closest clinics were about 1.5 hour walk away from the closest town, with no transport vehicles available. We had to walk six hours to and fro to get at some clinics. I imagine what it takes when a patient is in emergency in such a remote place. But worst of all some of the times these clinics do not have the essential drugs. The most skilled health worker at any one clinic was the registered nurse, but in some places the nurse aide. While the survey itself revealed a stalled health system and the great suffering and health need of our people, the experience itself was a great one. Grand Cape Mount County to me had the most beautiful landscape. The city (Robertsport) is build along a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the beautiful lake Shephered on the other side. Deep into the lake is the small, dark green, mangrove covered Masantine Island. The highway to the city itself is along the cape that extends deep into the ocean. On each side of the highway a wide spreading savanna land. The green grass grows as if it is trimmed on a regular basis. In the savanna are beautiful trees (which I personally thought were flowers planted in a pattern by the residents….but this is not so) each about 12 feet high with forest green leaves. The scene to me is the most beautiful natural landscape in that part of the country. But Gbarpolu County had a great wealth of nature. I have not such huge natural green forest in my life as I say in Gbarpolu. Some of the trees would take about 20 persons my height holding hand in hand, stretched out, to form a complete ring or circle around them. The place is also very mountainous. You never wall more than 45 minutes without having to climb a hill.  Then two weeks ago, I was part of five students in Buchanan along wit Dr. Peter S. Coleman and the rest of his team on a one week free surgical rotation. 91 cases were done. We all got to assist in all of these surgeries. The experience was very great. Many different procedures were done including thyroidectomies, myomectomies, hysterectomies, herniotomies, herniorraphies, hydrocelectomies, plastic surgeries, lipomectomies, keloidectomies, mastectomies, appendectomies, laparotomies, and many more. We learned a lot. We got hands on in surgical assistance. The University now has a new president (Dr. Emmett Dennis). We don’t know when we are getting a new Medical School Dean. But Dr. Dennis is doing great. If all goes well, by September medical students will benefit from a study grant to cover, tuition, allowance, textbooks, feeding and transportation from the government in return for 3 years of service for the government upon graduation.  The details are still being worked out. We are all looking forward to this. Dr. Marthee let me not steal all your very valued time. But we miss you so much and I just wanted to get in touch. Wish you well Doc. I am attaching few of the photos I could get for you. Have a great time Soka moses
Liberia Medical Association
13	From: Sbkennedy4@aol.com Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008 13:12:43 -0400 Subject: LMA Says Many Thanks To Dr. Kalai Mathee To: Sbkennedy4@aol.com Hey Colleagues - Dr. Kalai Mathee of Florida International University (FIU), a strong champion of medical education in post-war Liberia, an active member of the Liberia Medical Association (LMA)-USA and a pre-clinical science volunteer of the LMA's visiting professorship program, recently donated seven (7) brand new medical textbooks to the A. M. Dogliotti College of Medicine. The textbooks were turned over to the student leadership in July 2008. They are expected to be used in the medical school library as valuable reference textbooks. They consisted of diverse sets of Molecular Cell Biology, Pathophysiology, Medical Microbiology, and Biochemistry textbooks, respectively. The LMA would like to extend our many thanks and appreciation to Dr. Mathee for her continual service and contributions. In addition, we note that the leadership of the Liberia Medical Students Association (LMSA) was very appreciative of this kind gesture and had asked me to kindly relay those sentiments to Dr. Mathee. Thanks again and we look forward to continually working with you. If you intend to drop an e-note of gratitude and/or appreciation to Dr. Mathee, please do not hesitate to do so on this e-address: matheek@fiu.edu. Let me know if you have questions. Thx - Stephen B. Kennedy
14	From: Jallah Kennedy jallahmk@hotmail.com Date: 8/2/2008 Dr. Mathee, The email sent by Dr. Kennedy (above) expresses all of our sentiments of gratitude. Again, thank you so much for your help to the Liberian healthcare educational system with your time and these book donations. Your assistance will continue to make an enormously big set of differences. Your effort will be an inspiration to many. Jallah Kennedy
15	From: "Jimi Benson" <jimiobenson@yahoo.com> wrote: Date: 10/13/07 Hi Dr. Mathee, Try to recollect someone called Jimi Benson at the LMA meeting in Maryland. I remember you vividly when you were presenting your interesting document about the Medical College and Monrovia. I will like to sieze this opportunity to thank you and your colleague for the wonderful job you did in Monrovia. I was very thrilled for the time and effort you sacrificed for this philantropic deed. May God bless you and reward you. I am still going to be in America until next year. The NGO will still be in my hospital until late part of next year. This will give me more time to prepare myself to take over from them. I am sure your students at the Medical College will forever remember your didactic lectures and the sisterly care you gave them under the difficult circumstances. Do you hear from anyone of them since you left? Sorry for the delay in writing you. My regard to your colleague. Give her a hug for the job well-done. Sincerely, Dr. Benson
16	From: Jimi Benson jimiobenson@yahoo.com Date: 8/2/08 Dear Dr. Mathee, Dr Kennedy has just informed us that you recently donated big big big books to our children at the Medical College. I want to say a very big THANK YOU for your unflinching support to this college. I think you are now a Liberian citizen, I recommend it. Your colleague, Dr. Jimi Benson

C. OTHERS