We finished our final clinic today for our 13-member VIMM Team to Olanchito, Honduras.
Our statistics by day
Sat, 3/8/2025
Colonia La Fabiana
172 patients, 10 knee injections
Sun, 3/9/2025
Pastor Victor’s church in AM
102 patients, 15 injections
Girl’s home
11 patients
Nursing home
16 patients , 2 knee injections
Mon, 3/10/2025
Palmira (3 hours)
116 patients, 4 injections
Tues, 3/11/2025
Puerto Escondido (15 minutes)
148 patients, 18 joint injections
Wed, 3/12/2025
Jardines de la Montana ( 30 Minutes)
107 patients, 11 joint injections
Thurs, 3/13/2025
Jaguars Montana (30 minutes)
145 Patients, 17 Injections
TOTAL:
150 Gideon testaments distributed
808 patients seen
75 injections performed
12 canes distributed
900 toothbrushes/paste distributed
We had a wonderful team and great Honduran assistants with no major problems all week. The Honduran national police and Olanchito municipal police provided great security from the San Pedro Sula Airport to Olanchito and each clinic. We even got to celebrate Pastor Victor Gomez’s 65th birthday at a special villa outside Olanchito with great food and beautiful swimming pools.
Rotarians Mike and Susan Reid, Sounia Chaney, myself, and Bob Cardin enjoyed a great meeting with the Rotary Club of Club Rotario Olanchito in which Abner Boedner was inducted as a new member and we discussed the Puerto Escondido global grant water project.
Great clinics on days 2 and 3 of our mission to Honduras! The team is working well together and our PA students are doing a great job. The health status of the villagers seems to improve each year; no serious illnesses noted so far. Our clinics were held at Pastor Victor’s church, a nearby girl’s home and a nursing home on Sunday (129 patients)and in Palmira on Monday (116 patients). Very long 3-hour drive to Palmira with extremely cautious driver! Thanks for your prayers!
Great first day in Olanchito, Honduras! All medicines packed in individual packets by our team members in morning and smooth afternoon clinic near Olanchito with 172 patients seen. Our PA students from Quinnipiac University did a great job and learned how to perform knee injections. Great night of sleep and ready to go to church with clinic following church.
Excited to be returning to Olanchito, Honduras for my 27th time since 1997! Our team of 13 from Florida, North Carolina, and New Hampshire will be working with Pastor Victor Gomez in remote villages within 1-2 hours from Olanchito providing primary care, dental hygiene, minor surgery, and most importantly, the Gospel of Jesus Christ to 1,200-1,500 patients. Sixteen churches have been started since we began this work in 1997. We’re praying for safe travel, smooth processing through Honduran Customs, and safe travel via bus from San Pedro Sula to Olanchito.
This has been an amazing week filled with lots of emotions as our team as traveled to a different African Vision of Hope (AVOH) school in Zambia each day. We have seen children excited about learning, singing about Jesus enthusiastically, and looking forward to a bright future. Our team has visited the homes of 2 children each day and seen how AVOH has given these very vulnerable children hope for the future by emphasizing the importance of them accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior, studying diligently to do well on periodic government tests, and learning to be productive members of society.
I have enjoyed working with Prudence and Beauty, nurses with AVOH who visit each campus periodically to treat the children with health issues. I was impressed with the love and compassion shown in their interactions with the children. They did a very good job treating the various ailments including common and non-life-threatening illnesses such as headaches, colds, abdominal pain, and sore throat. However, after asking questions about their physical exam, diagnostic skills, and treatment of more serious conditions, it was very clear that more education was needed. I cannot recall enjoying teaching more than my time yesterday and today with Beauty and Prudence. They told me today how much they learned and can apply immediately.
The primary purpose of this trip was to determine how to work with AVOH in the future. I work with Volunteers in Medical Missions (www.vimm.org) and normally bring 10+ physicians, nurses, other healthcare professionals, and non-medical team members to provide physical and spiritual healing to people in developing nations. Early in the week, I did not feel the great expense and long travel could be justified to treat common conditions in K-12 schools. Yesterday, God clearly showed me that we can make the greatest impact by teaching Zambian nurses and other healthcare professionals. I shared my idea of bringing a team to teach one healthcare worker (nurse or other interested AVOH staff member) for each school. They need to learn better physical examination skills, developing a differential diagnosis (various disease possibilities for common presenting complaints), and current treatment guidelines. Virtually any subject brought up was an opportunity to teach. Prudence, now a 4th year medical student at the University of Lusaka, told me that they need to learn good physical exam skills, how to develop a good differential diagnosis for common complaints, how to interpret ECG’s, how to perform procedures such as placing nasogastric and Foley catheters, applying casts for fractures. She indicated that they would be very appreciative if we could supply diagnostic instruments to include stethoscopes, otoscopes, BP cuffs, and pulse oximeters.
I hope to return to Zambia either before or after my Appalachian Trail thru-hike beginning in late June 2025 to conduct this training. Ideally, I hope we can bring one person from each campus to Lusaka for the training since travel is slow and long between the various AVOH campuses. I hope to recruit physicians and nurses interested in teaching. I also hope to bring needed diagnostic instruments to help the trained healthcare workers to examine, diagnose, and treat patients. I spoke with Bob Bertel, co-founder and VP of AVOH, about my idea, and he also thought this was a great idea.
