16 Jan Update from Honduras

After a COVID-19-imposed hiatus that interrupted our annual brigades at the San Felipe Hospital in Tegucigalpa, where we’ve been active for over 20 years, we returned in January 2023 with unknown expectations. How would the 3-year gap affect the number of potential patients presenting for surgical screening? The answer was that nearly 400 people were waiting for us, almost three times what we would typically expect per surgical brigade. As the surgery schedule rapidly filled in, it generated a waiting list of more than 20 patients for a future brigade. Rather than recreating the problem in 2024, we conducted a second brigade in August 2023 and will likely run two brigades there yearly. We are pleased to report that the patients are progressing well and hope to reevaluate them in January 2024.

We are also happy to share that discussions are underway with the faculty and staff at the Hospital General del Sur, in Choluteca province, following our Tegucigalpa faculty’s advocacy on our behalf to the hospital’s administration in Choluteca. We are planning a site visit in January 2024 in hopes of beginning a new surgical brigade location soon.