A different type of medical brigade

Last Saturday, a medical group, AMIGAS, arrived in force to do three medical brigades here. They have been coming here for several years. 

I have my reservations about many medical groups who come to Honduras to do a quick “Gringo doctors will heal you” with a single visit. 

But this group is different. First of all, they return to the same municipalities each year. )This year they also spent a day near la Lima, on the coast, since they have connections there and there was a community very devastated by the rains this year.)

 They came to our area for the first time at least six years ago and they come once or twice a year (although they were not here in 2020, due to the pandemic.) Thus, they get to know a bit about the area and its specific problems and also get to know and support the local public health people. They are also great in interacting with local people.

I have accompanied them for several years, often translating for the doctors who don’t speak Spanish. I also end up being the extra vehicle to help get them to the distant sites. 

They do not stay in hotels. This year, they stayed in the parish center which worked out rather well for them, mostly in terms of having sufficient space to prepare the medicine for their rural visits. 

 This year they went to three locations: the municipal center of Concepción, the village of El Limón, and the mountain village of Delicias Concepión. They probably saw around 1000 people. 

This year I didn’t do much translating. They have some adolescents from a Santa Rosa bilingual school who regularly come and help.

But this year there was something that I found very encouraging. 

In Delicias, I was helping get people in line to see the doctors. At one point, I looked up and saw the doctors and nurses. Five of them were Hondurans. The other four service providers were from the US.

This is not a “gringo” brigade, although funded and led from the US. 

Interesting the directors are a US doctor from Missouri (I think) and a Honduran Sister of Mercy who does her ministry in Missouri. I wonder if the people realized this. 

The presence of Honduran medical volunteers is a very subtle way of trying to avoid the danger of the brigades undermining Honduran health personnel. 

This blogpost is somewhat sketchy since I am tried and need more sleep, but I am grateful that I could accompany them. (I even took six of them to the Copán Mayan ruins on their day off.) 

They were also a group filled with a lot of energy.

I look forward to their future visits and am very grateful for their commitment to serve the poor