I will travel with a team of 115 professionals to provide orthopedic, plastic, gynecological, and general surgical care to underserved Guatemalan women and children. Last year we performed 120 donated surgical procedures, cared for almost 2400 clinic visits, and filled 4000 charitable prescriptions. We will take over a National Hospital for ten days and are welcomed by the overwhelmed and under financed local medical community.
The underserved women and children of Guatemala. I will provide trauma care for the men as the indications arise. I am also chairman of our Prosthetics and Orthotics committee. We provided free of charge 127 custom orthotic and prosthetic devices last year by working with my Guatemalan colleague.
The impact for these people who have no other access to care in a timely, free fashion has been immense in my prior 9 mission trips to this country. There is an even greater need this year because of recent natural disasters and lack of new health care funding.
I have trained - and will continue to train - local surgeons and medical students while we are there. This year, I am also bringing an orthopedic chief resident with me.
I am grateful to the Doximity Foundation for providing a travel grant for my eleventh trip with Children of the Americas to provide orthopedic care to the underserved women and children of Guatemala. Our Team consisted of 140 volunteers across multiple medical, nursing, logistical, and surgical disciplines.
We were able to provide care for 2,413 patient encounters, 131 orthopedic, plastic, gynecologic, and general surgeries. We also donated and filled 4,528 prescriptions in a one week period.
My ortho team took molds for 92 custom orthotics and prostheses and our Guatemalan orthotists are very busy fabricating these braces and prostheses so that they may be delivered when I return in six weeks for postoperative clinic.
This mission is truly life-changing for our Central American patients and enriching beyond words for our medical and surgical volunteers. I hope my modest contribution will inspire others to do what they can to improve global health!
