Nueva Capital, Francisco Morazon, Teguscigalpa, Honduras
27 Enero 2015
0513 hours

Gehlen Mission Honduras Medical/Dental team followers.  Happy Tuesday.  Today is going to be much the same as yesterday.  The weather patterns are really strange this week.  Yesterday, clouds, wind (and I mean strong) along with a light rain later in the afternoon.  Today's high in Tegus is projected to be 25 C or 77 F, with a low of 13 C or 55 F.  The report says this day should be warmer than yesterday.  I wonder where the warm will come from.  Last night was very cool and very high winds.  I just can't image how some of these people cope with this type of weather when they live in a shoebox for a home,  But, they do and we probably saw many of them yesterday.

The team members are still in bed and I'm sure they will be a little slower in getting up today after a very long day yesterday.

I have read Ms. Kelly's post and I will agree with her about the internet connection last night.  We tried many times to sign on after originally being able to do this.  We also tried to upload photo's from Dr. Benzoni's phone but apparently that did no work as well.  Currently I am sitting in the kitchen area with the 2 cooks as they are preparing breakfast.  The coffee is warm.  It looks like pancakes this morning  The food as been really good here.  A complete Honduran menu. Like yesterday morning the internet connection is really good.  I'm sure the weather effects it here in the mountains.

Like Ms. Kelly said the medical element of the team saw 256 patients in clinic, the dental element saw  41 and pulled 45 teeth and then because of the large volume we had to do a "pip line" later in the afternoon.  This is where we give patients de-worming medicine, vitamins, both kids and adults and then Acetaminophen.  We did not count those forms last night but Diana and I are estimating we treated abut 75 or more patients.  So this leaves us with patient contacts of over 350.

We had various problems with patient flow because of the high winds.  Another factor was that the school gave out (in advance) 300 numbers, which to us meant 300 patients.  The problem, a mother would show up with a number but with 3-5 kids.  This caused confusion in registration forms because these kids had no forms.  We had to work around this and will probably have some of the same problems today.

During our nightly meeting the team members talked about the day, the flow issues and possible solutions.  We will change some processes today with the hope of having a smoother patient flow system.  We will want to treat each and every patient.  I thought the people were very patient with us.  They value so much the time to have an American doctor tell them that their children are doing ok and with certain interventions will do better in the days ahead.

I did not look at the forms yet, but I do not remember in all the clinic days I have been involved with - did we have so many kids, many under age five (5).  Ms Kelly and her mother Carol did the weighing and measuring of the kids and then compared them to World Health Organization standards for height and weigh.  They reported many kids were at the median Z score with many others with a - Z score which means undernourished kids.  Later after the team leaves I will summarize these data points.

Well I better quit for now.  Maybe when Ms. Kelly gets up we can send some pictures.  The team members have great ones.  Have a great day.  God bless and peace.

Mr. Francis