What is 'international development'? How can we truly partner with others?
To heal others, heal ourselves, and heal our planet.
A true story of the transformation of a surgeon and his adopted Guyanese community.
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Somewhere over the rainforest in Guyana there's a land called the Rupununi, a creek-crossed savannah inhabited for millennia by Indigenous people of great capacity. This is where Dr. Jamshid Aidun, a Persian Canadian surgeon and a humble man of faith, went to lead the Bahá'í Community Health Partnership, and to heal his own broken heart.
Moving to Guyana from his surgical practice in Manitoba, Aidun was the only doctor for 17,000 people scattered across a region the size of Nova Scotia. For five years, he performed life-saving surgeries and travelled by Land Rover, canoe, bicycle, bullock cart, and on foot, accompanying Macushi and Wapishana villagers to take charge of their own health care.
Sourced from detailed interviews with Aidun and many key players, and from his own journals, Ripples from the Rupununi traces the transformation of an Indigenous community that was historically underestimated. Finding spiritual strength in service, Aidun rediscovered love and healed himself while he healed others.
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Available Now!
About the Author
As a friend of Dr. Aidun’s and a surgeon who worked in Guyana, Brian Cameron was uniquely positioned to witness the ripple effects of the Bahá’í Community Health Partnership. This exhaustively researched biography is his tribute to Dr. Aidun and the remarkable Rupununi people.
Dr. Cameron is a Professor Emeritus of Pediatric Surgery at McMaster University. He practiced in Canada’s north, the South Pacific, and the rural United States before returning to an academic surgical career in Canada.
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Inspired by Dr. Aidun, he worked with Canadian and Guyanese colleagues to establish Guyana’s first postgraduate surgical training program. In 2021 Cameron was awarded the M. Andrew Padmos International Collaboration Award of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
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Brian enrolled in the Bahá'í Faith when he was twenty and married Pat in 1978. They live in Dundas, Ontario.
Photos
Dr. Aidun visiting Lethem Hospital in 2020
Brian with Dr. Aidun in Toronto (2024)
A bullock cart on the Rupununi savannah (2023)
ABOUT THE BOOK
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"Aidun came to be regarded as a role model, inspiring Indigenous youth to pursue medical careers long after he departed the Rupununi."
Laureen Pierre, EdD
Indigenous Guyanese Educator
[From the Foreward]