01 January 2015
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Greetings to all Mission Honduras LeMars medical/dental team
members. Felix Anos Nuevo.
I arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on Thursday 18 December
2014 to begin the in-county logistical coordination for the upcoming
medical/dental team trip. I want to
share a few things with you at this time and will have more messages in the
future.
Dick and I communicate almost every day either by email or
cell phone. We are both in contact with
Marta Sosa here in Honduras from Fundacion Cerro de Plata. She is and has been meeting and talking with
the representatives at school in Nueva Capital.
Here are some facts that I know today:
For a perspective on Nueva Capital here are a few facts: We think there are about 25,000 homes there
and using a typical figure that each household has 5 or 6 kids, you can do the
math on this area. Now having said this,
many of these people do not live close to the school and the area we will work
in. We have set our goal of helping the
families and kids that attend the school.
Of course we will probably see others from other parts because they know
we are coming. Each day we will serve a
different zone or sector. This has
already been decided. The school
administration will coordinate this.
Hopefully, we will
have 1-2 more dentists to help. These
are Hondurans and bilingual. I know one
of them because she has helped with our 2011 mission with JTFB in Montana de la
Flor. She is also an attorney and
she has expressed a desire to help as much a possible. This is still a little fluid but it looks
very promising.
The local translators will come from the University system
along with Marta Sosa and her 2 daughters (they have also helped with Gehlen
teams). We will need to provide daily
transportation to and from Nueva Capital.
I am still working on this issue but it will be worked out.
The local Bomberos (Fire department EMS unit) will also
assist us. We will probably leave some
supplies and equipment with them once we leave. You’d be surprised what they don’t have.
Other folks have offered to help. I will find out more on this later.
We have hired a cook.
She is the same lady that did the cooking for the Gehlen Mission
Honduras trip last March. She is a real
good cook. The menu will be typical
Honduran, maybe will a sprinkling of
American, but mostly Honduran. We will
eat all of our meals in the compound area.
The school has a large gate and a guard so this will really
help with ground control because there will be pandemonium outside daily. I would not be surprised to see some Honduras
military units in the area like they are all over the city.
We have tentatively laid out the work areas for triage,
pharmacy, medical doctors and dentists.
Dick and Tim, we will use those 2 dental beds we have used in the
past. If we have 3 dentists working at
once we will have to improvise, which should not be a problem. We will need to be flexible in this whole
team process.
I am still working with Marta Sosa on whether we will have a
Honduran medical student doing triage as part of the registration. More on that another day.
We will use a medical/dental assessment form. On the back of this form will be the drug
list that we have available. The doctors
will use a highlighter to indicate what medicines they are prescribing along
with the quantity. We will visit about
this once we arrive.
At triage the patient’s vital signs will be taken and added
to the medical assessment form. It is
here that we will weigh and measure the height of every child between 6 months
and up to age 5. We will compare these
results with the WHO standards using Z scores.
I have these with me and we will go over these data before the clinic
starts. It is at triage that we will
also use a Middle Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) to measure for malnutrition
and stunting on all children age 6 months to age 5. Tasha and Diane have used these before. We might also measure and weigh kids older
than 5, but I only have standards up to a point. We will use a digital scale in
kilograms (so practice the art of conversion).
We will have to decide if we want to give the de-worming medicine here
or elsewhere. This is always a process.
We will need to figure out where we would have the treatment
area for nebs, sutures etc. We will work
on that at the scene.
We have arranged for bus transportation to meet the team at
the airport, take us to Nueva Capital, pick us up and take us to the hotel on
the last Saturday and then take the team to the airport on Sunday. We may need to rent another smaller van for
other people we will bring to clinic daily, like the translators etc.
ACOES will bring a large truck to the airport to transport
the bags. They will also help us get
many of the supplies to the area in advance of the teams arrival. We pay them for diesel and maybe a small
stipend for the driver. We will also
have Mission Honduras LeMars Toyota 28-D Hilux double cab pickup with us at all
times. Many of you have ridden in this pickup and know how tough it is. I will also serve as our patient transport
vehicle if necessary if the Bomberos are out of the area.
For those that may want to go to mass on Saturday afternoon we
are checking on this but it should not be a problem.
Well, I think I will stop here. I hope one day soon I can get a list of
supplies that various team members have been asking for. Also, we will buy certain medicines here in
Honduras and they should be available next week. I will also talk with Dr. Miguel Coello about
the choice of de-worming medicine. This
is costly but is really a very important part of treating so many of these
kids.
Felix Anos Nuevo. See
you soon. Mr. Francis
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