After the initial setup by Dr. Brodie and Dr. Hanlon, the team that arrived in July, 2002 consisted of Dr. Brian Brodie, Dr. John Hamilton (both from the Vancouver area), Joyce Ball and Janet Cayford (both nurses from the Calgary area), plus Andrea Ball, Mandy Davidson to work as bouncers (basically) for our clinics, Gary Davidson (med student from Edmonton) and Sarah Davidson (translator from Costa Rica). We also received translation help from Ken Brewer of Pan American Missions out of Kansas and Karla Rivera, a local volunteer.
This first trip was more for discovery than anything else and the projects were varied. We met with the Director of Public Health for the province of Copan and subsequently with the Director for Public Health for Western Honduras. Through the cooperation of these authorities, we held a check-up clinic and teaching day for the clients of a local maternity center that was built through the Alberta Rotary Clubs. We also held a training session later in the week for hospital staff regarding issues such as child-birth process and techniques. We held training sessions at the San Juan de Opoa public health clinic as well as the Corquin maternity clinic. We visited one of the local orphanages and hosted general health clinics at La Majara, a village close to Santa Rosa de Copán and at the Industrial Poligino -- a local foundation that is providing education to local youth who otherwise could not afford to continue with school after grade 6. We were able to distribute a fair value of medicines that we were able to obtain from Medical Missions International out of Mississauga, Ontario.
Through the efforts of this first team, we identified San Juan de Opoa as a target site on which to focus. Subsequently, the second team from the Vancouver area that joined us consisted of Dr. Broide, Dr. Stienberg, Dr. Fandrich, Kelly Irwin (a drug company representative), Deborah Skakum and Sarah Brodie (both of whom helped as medical assistants for our clinics. This group spent more time at San Jua de Opoa than the previous group and included a dental care seminar at the local SJO school in their program. We also hosted a nutrition seminar for the kids at La Roca followed by one for their mothers. We held a clinic at the clinic for Las Minas Occidente where-in the citizens of the 3 communities involved with the mine were bussed in for the session. We also hosted another clinic at La Majara and a grand television press conference to raise awareness of the youth center, La Roca, and the contribution of our medical team in terms of medicines and medical equipment donated -- which was quite extensive this time.
Noticing the impact of water borne disease we made a commitment to the community of San Juan de Opoa to provide them with chlorine for their urban water supply as a way to attack many of the basic medical problems before they reach the clinic. (see the "Water" page for more info).
Each year, Dr. Brodie and Joyce Ball worked to put together medical teams to come work with us. The focus, however, was certainly shifting. Less and less time was being spent on clinical work and more and more time was being invested in prevention. That comes in the form of education and dealing with water.
By 2005, we were no longer seeing any patients. We certainly continue to assist the clinic in San Juan de Opoa with medicines, but the medical aspect of our function has completed shifted over to addressing water issues. Within Project Hope, we will address medical issues such as basic personal and community hygiene in the program and our doctors will be able to provide annual check-ups. However, we have always found it more useful to work in conjunction with local doctors, so that even with Project Hope, we will collaborate with one or more local doctors to ensure that the participants do not develop a "gringo doctor only, please" mentality such as has been known to occur in rural villages that host foreign medical brigades.