Medicos
Invade Honduras
By Marco Santana,
The Register-Mail
Having a broken leg for 20 years seems
unthinkable in the United States.
Devon Boydstun, however, met a man who
endured just that on a recent trip to
Honduras.
Boydstun and 24 others, including three
American doctors from the Galesburg area,
traveled to Central America’s second-most
impoverished country at the beginning of
June and offered free medical care for the
country’s residents, many of whom had never
seen a doctor.
“It was pretty sobering to see the living
conditions of a lot of other people,”
Boydstun said. “They are, a lot of times,
kind of stuck.”
The group went to Honduras as part of the
Illinois Wesleyan University chapter of the
Global Medical Brigade, a national
organization that sends several groups a
year to poor countries in order to offer
medical care.
Boydstun, 20, a pre-med student at the
university, began investigating the
possibility of the group last summer after
his brother, Ian, returned from a trip of
his own, this one through Butler University.
He sought fellow students and some Spanish
majors even joined the cause to practice
their translation skills.
The process was pretty standard, Boydstun
said. And once in Honduras, the ailments
were as varied as the people they met. Some
came in with elevated blood pressure while
others, like the man who had a broken leg
for the better part of two decades, had more
serious conditions.
The man’s leg had not healed correctly and,
instead, had left him in constant pain. He
visited the medical brigade seeking
ibuprofen.
Boydstun said that although they received
thanks for their treatments, just their
presence seemed to make a difference.
“None of the people we treated even have
running water,” Boydstun said. “A lot of the
people, almost more than the health care
they are getting, they thank you for taking
the time to go down there; to actually
visually and personally be there to see what
it’s like.”
The group set out for Honduras on June 1.
The brigade’s national group chooses a
focus, based on several factors, including
poverty and resources. Right now, Honduras
is the focus and the Global Medical Brigade
will send several groups this summer.
The ultimate goal is to move the focus to a
different country, because that would mean
conditions have improved slightly. When they
arrived, they saw several dilapidated homes
and shacks, many of which seemed ready to
fall over.
The country is very mountainous and many of
the homes were built on hillsides, forcing
them to include steep steps and sometime
crooked houses.
Boydstun said, however, that their quarters
for the week were adequate.
The facility had a men’s and women’s bunk
area. Boydstun compared the building to a
fraternity house.
“It was set up for college kids,” he said.
Each day at about 8 a.m., the group set out
to its location, which spanned the country
and usually took at least an hour to reach.
They had converted schools waiting for them,
which included a triage area, where students
would receive patients and run basic tests
and gather information such as patient
histories. A second room, the doctors’ room,
followed the triage area and a third room
that served as a student-run pharmacy with
medication and supplies.
A translator would explain the dosages to
the patients to make sure they understood.
More than $100,000 worth of medicine was
donated to the group by charities and
organizations, which Boydstun said made the
trip possible.
He said the learning experience was great
and that the students managed to find time
to bond in the evenings.
But the main point was helping the residents
of Honduras, which he said, for a relatively
small group, they did a good job of. He said
they helped more than 1,000 patients,
including more than 500 in one day near the
end of the trip. But he hopes a year of
experience will help him in the years to
come.
“The members who joined this year were kind
of going on blind faith,” he said. “But
after this year, it’s all going to be twice
as easy. We know what to ask for and we know
who to ask and who came through for us. That
should make that process even easier.” |
