Laguna Woods resident changes lives one step at a time - OCRegister

By Penny E. Schwartz

Correspondent

As a teen increasing up successful Hong Kong, James Lau enjoyed doing unpaid enactment with handicapped children.

Fast guardant 5 decades, and the retired orthopedic surgeon, present 67, continues to alteration young lives done his aesculapian ngo enactment successful far-flung corners of the world.

Lau, a Village resident, precocious returned from a aesculapian ngo to Kurdistan successful bluish Iraq, wherever helium performed life-altering surgeries connected young patients successful a Yazidi exile camp.

At a fundraising dinner, Lau offered a video presumption from his September travel showing patients earlier and aft the surgeries helium performed. One country straightened a child’s clubfoot portion others allowed a youngster with cerebral palsy and different with misshapen bones to locomotion normally.

“These are not elemental surgeries,” Lau said. “I supply a work that radical cannot get elsewhere.”

Many of the patients person congenital problems that person been neglected their full lives due to the fact that determination are neither the resources nor the cognition locally to code them, Lau said.

“No 1 operates connected handicapped children successful these places,” helium said. He usually returns to the exile camps 2 months aboriginal for follow-up. “I don’t similar hit-and-run benignant of medicine.”

Lau’s youthful tendency to assistance young radical with disabilities deepened arsenic helium entered aesculapian schoolhouse successful Hong Kong. There helium indulged different of his passions – aiding refugees.

As a recently baptized Christian, helium began offering escaped aesculapian services by moving a session for immigrants successful Hong Kong’s resettlement area.

“Many of them were from debased socio-economic classes successful agrarian areas of mainland China,” Lau said “They were not successful bully carnal information owed to poorness and deficiency of aesculapian care.”

After orthopedic grooming successful Liverpool, England, Lau did a fellowship astatine a South Carolina Shriners Hospital, specializing successful pediatric orthopedics. He settled successful Southern California with his wife, Shirley, successful 1988, past joined the unit of a Kaiser Permanente infirmary successful Anaheim successful 1990.

“I ever liked moving with children,” helium said of his pediatric orthopedic specialty, which helium practiced until his status successful 2017. The Laus moved to the Village past year.

During the mid-1990s, Lau’s dual passions converged erstwhile helium was invited to mainland China to supply aesculapian services to indigent, semirural populations.

“I recovered it meaningful to supply work to mediocre people,” said Lau, who would signifier aesculapian teams for abbreviated work missions successful antithetic provinces.

“We felt harmless successful China past and we were welcomed,” helium said. “The radical were affable and worked with us.”

That concern changed successful 2018-19, erstwhile the Chinese authorities was nary longer hospitable to Lau and his aesculapian teams. The pandemic enactment an extremity to his enactment there.

When 1 doorway closed, however, different opened for Lau and the aesculapian missions helium organized done the HIS (Holistic Integrated Services) Foundation, a nonprofit helium co-founded to further his work.

In 2018, a nonprofit moving successful Kurdistan invited Lau’s radical to assistance the Yazidi refugees, who had been driven from their homes successful Iraq done taste cleansing. Yazidis are Kurdish-speaking radical surviving chiefly successful Iraq, Syria, Armenia and Georgia who signifier an past monotheistic religion. Following persecution of the Kurds by Iraq successful the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, definite areas were designated harmless havens for the Kurds successful bluish Iraq.

Lau recruited astir 2 twelve squad members worldwide, including from Australia and Hong Kong, and had to person galore that it was harmless to question to Iraq.

“It was the archetypal clip we had worked successful a Muslim state and didn’t cognize the civilization well,” Lau said of the 2019 trip. “People were amazingly friendly, and information did not crook retired to beryllium a large contented for the team, which consisted mostly of women.”

Lau is the lone surgeon connected the team, which includes an anesthesiologist and a cadre of nurses. The instauration pays for aesculapian supplies, but each squad members are volunteers who wage their ain way.

The instauration has offered escaped aesculapian attraction to indigent patients successful Vietnam and Madagascar. HIS besides sponsors a wheelchair ministry that has provided thousands of wheelchairs to radical successful China and underdeveloped countries. It has besides offered scholarships to students successful China and provides earthy catastrophe alleviation astir the world.

The aesculapian team’s sojourn to Kurdistan successful February 2022 was fraught with trouble owed to squad members coming down with COVID, Lau recalled. At 1 point, astir fractional the squad of 24 was sick, but they managed with a skeleton unit to implicit their ngo successfully.

The astir caller trip, successful September, went overmuch much smoothly, Lau said.

His wife, Shirley, has accompanied him connected his missions.

“The radical successful Iraq were precise affable and receptive,” she said.

While not a trained aesculapian professional, she provides assistance wherever needed successful taking photos, sitting with patients and comforting mothers and children.

“I americium blessed that I tin articulation James due to the fact that erstwhile our children were young, I couldn’t spell with him,” she said. “We effort to assistance the refugees assistance themselves.”

Lau is gratified erstwhile the patients helium has operated connected are capable to locomotion with a grade of normality.

“Good mobility is indispensable and you can’t bask beingness afloat without it,” helium said. “If I tin assistance radical amended their mobility, that is simply a precise bully happening to do.”