Last Day of Clinics

Today was our last day serving the fine people of Honduras. Our destination today was Los Hules, Rio Lindo Cortes, a short, bumpy ride from Alfredo house. We would like to end this week giving you a synopsis of what we are actually doing in each of the clinics we set up.

As we drove up to the school there were many villagers eager to greet us, even though it was raining. With volunteers and paid FOB employees, it takes 39 people to make this complex operation unfold like clockwork. The villagers helped unload about a ton of medical supplies as the others had done each day. Supplies were then brought into the school house where we began to set up for our day. This village was the smallest of all the ones we visited this week. It was so small, in fact, we needed to "borrow" the home of one family. Two armed guards riding in the back of a pick-up truck accompanied us to each village and we are also guarded while staying at Alfredo house.

The day teams arrive is a holiday in the village. No school and the women don't have to cook. They carry food with them to eat while waiting at the clinics. Some of them walk for several hours to reach the site of the clinic, wear their finest clothes, and the little children are very excited.

The clinics we set up are as follows; medical clinic, dental, eye, vitamin and vitamin A, deworming and fluoride treatments for the children to age 12 years.

To follow one clinic in this article we will follow one elderly gentleman through the eye clinic. He told us about the problems he has with his eyes and we use an auto-refractor to determine his vision needs. Our computer checks our inventory of approximately 3,000 pairs of glasses (donated by the Lions Club and bought by FOB) to find several pair that most closely need his needs. We try each of these glasses on him, give him something to read and the best pair goes home with him. At times when we have no bifocals, we give two pair. One for reading and one for distance. All this takes approximately 10 minutes. Similar activities occur at each of the other clinics.

The team finished the week with humility and joy at the opportunity to serve the beautiful people of Honduras