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February 12, 2010
VCOM OB/GYN and Primary Care Themed Mission Trip to Honduras
Jan 31 through Feb 6, 2010
Leaving Blacksburg buried under a foot of snow and overcoming the challenges of travel delays created by a winter storm, the mission team disembarked the plane in Honduras in sunny, 80 degree weather eager to embrace the challenges of the week. Team members included two third-year VCOM students completing their one month underserved care rotation in Honduras, two second-year students, eleven first-year students, three VCOM spouses serving as volunteers, one non-VCOM volunteer, one staff member, Dr. Jan Willcox, and Dr. David Harden. We were met in Honduras by local VCOM faculty physician Dr. Xiomara Erazo, who joined the mission team for the week. Our home base was the Baxter Institute, and as always, the team enjoyed the remarkable hospitality of Baxter Institute staff, the delicious traditional food, and beautiful a cappella singing of Baxter students. Baxter President Howard Norton and his wife Jane extended a very warm welcome to the mission team and assisted with housing logistics.
On Monday and Tuesday, the mission team, which included many members of the VCOM OB/GYN club, focused on women's health for residents of the surrounding community in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The team worked from the James Moody Adams Clinic at Baxter Institute to provide free well women exams and pap smears with follow up. The team also provided general medical care and osteopathic manipulative therapy at the clinic. In addition, each student completed a four-hour rotation shadowing a physician in the maternity ward at San Felipe Hospital in Tegucigalpa, and had an opportunity to view Honduran labor and delivery protocol, including observing live births and C-sections.
During the latter half of the week, the team traveled as far as 78 KM from Baxter Institute, at high altitudes in remote mountain villages, to provide general medical care, osteopathic manipulative therapy, dental care and vitamin supplements. Beans, rice and clothing were provided to the village with the greatest need. By week’s end over 350 patients were seen in the villages of Guajire, Campamento and San Juancito. Each of these villages was visited by a VCOM medical team after the catastrophic floods of November 2008, and many were revisited again in May 2009. Through regular visits, VCOM has begun to establish continuity of care in these villages. The February 2010 mission team had an opportunity to track significant improvements that are being made in the lives and health of villagers as well as in the villages themselves.
While working in the clinic and at the villages, the team enjoyed the benefit of several bilingual and medically talented VCOM students who assisted with exams and translation. In addition, five highly competent translators from Baxter joined the team. Dr. Xiomara Erazo and the experienced staff at the Baxter Institute clinic arrived early to each village to prepare the mission site and organize the waiting patients; in 
addition, they generously provided supplies and local resources to the mission team. VCOM spouses and other volunteers improved the efficiency of triage, engaged children in games, and provided photography and other general support to the mission team. Our excellent drivers from the Baxter Institute navigated the challenges of traffic, mountainous paths, road construction and other less than adequate road conditions to deliver the team safely to and from the mission site each day.
VCOM faculty physicians provided after-hours osteopathic manipulative therapy training for students who were eager to learn and demonstrate their knowledge. VCOM students embraced opportunities to fulfill the VCOM mission of providing compassionate medical care to the underserved, and had a smile and a hug for every patient. The team used an osteopathic approach, considering the whole patient in providing care, including environmental, social, and physical elements as well as financial challenges, meeting needs with medical treatment and osteopathic manipulative therapy. Conditions treated included dermatological problems, stroke, high blood pressure, and other conditions common in developing areas. As always, the team found that the warm, resilient Honduran people gave much more back than the team could provide to them.