We are going to the Moore Center in Guatemala City to do surgery on children with plastic surgery and urologic conditions that fall through the cracks of the public health system.
This mission is limited to children with urologic or plastic surgery needs. While these children have real needs they are acute or life threatening so they never reach the top of the list for the public hospital but cannot access the private system so they just go untreated.
Last year we operated on over 50 children. We also worked with some local medical students and local attending colleagues in order to improve local capabilities. We also try to use these mission to encourage our US colleagues to get involved in global surgical education and care.
Thank you for supporting my recent trip to Guatemala.
This trip was dedicated to treating children requiring urologic and plastic surgeries.
The children we treated were specifically children who truly needed surgery but whose condition was not severe enough to reach the top of the priority lists of the overburdened public system. Many had waited years for even routine needs such as bringing down an undescended testis or correcting their hypospadias.
It was particularly gratifying to see the relief in the faces of their parents who have often been trying for years to get their children taken care of.
We screened approximately 130 children and did over 50 surgeries.
