Our medical outreach activity in Honduras began in San Pedro Sula even before our Guatemalan activity in the late 70′s. At the time San Pedro Sula, a coastal town on the Caribbean, was largely dependent on agriculture, primarily banana plantations. Today, San Pedro Sula is a booming industrial city that exceeds even the population of the capital city, Tegucigalpa. There are high-rise buildings and poverty, textile factories and poverty, banana plantations and poverty, and so on.
Answering an ad in the Journal of Thoracic Surgery, which was recruiting volunteer thoracic surgeons to operate on tuberculotic patients at the Leonardo Martinez Hospital, our surgeons traveled to San Pedro Sula to perform thoracoplasties. The only public hospital was outmoded and lacking basic facilities. Medical equipment and supplies were sparse. The laundry was hand-washed and hung to dry. While the well-to-do sought treatment at the private hospitals or flew to the United States for medical care, the rest of the population was cared for by the poorly equipped public hospital, Leonardo Martínez. A good example of the dire situation we faced: A patient was on the operating table and already asleep when a sterile sheet was accidentally dropped. The surgery had to be canceled because there was not another sheet available.
We worked through several summers at the Leonardo Martinez Hospital. Besides the never ending row of tuberculotic thoracoplasties and lung resections, we also had the opportunity to perform several closed (without a heart-lung machine) heart procedures, -the first ones in the country.
The news of our efforts reached the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, where we were first invited to lecture at the University of Honduras, and afterward to operate at the Instituto Nacional de Thorax, -mainly on patients suffering from tuberculosis. The scope of our work quickly expanded to the performance of heart catheterizations and simple open heart operations, -again, the first ones in Honduras. About twelve subsequent trips to Tegucigalpa were made by our team. Each time 6-8 open heart cases were performed. Then problems, however, began to mound when Honduran surgeons, who were well experienced in lung surgery, but had only a few months training in Charlotte in open-heart interventions, yielded to local pressure and began to do heart surgery in our absence. The results were disappointing and they were forced to suspend the program.
Our involvement in San Pedro Sula was revived 30-years later when answering the call of Mr. Duke Kimbrell, President of Parkdale Mills, who had a large textile factory in San Pedro Sula. He asked us if we could start a project to promote the health of the children of San Pedro Sula.
Upon our return, the changes we found were amazing. The population doubled, there was more commerce and a multitude of new buildings. However, despite the economic strides there was an astonishing amount of poverty and sadly no change or advances in healthcare. The well-to-do still sought treatment in local private hospitals or traveled to the United States, and the poor were treated at one of the community hospitals that were rich in good will, but in dire need of technology. Among these hospitals we found the Social Security Hospital and the old Leonardo Martinez Hospital, which had been rejuvenated by a grant by the Japanese government, the most eager to cooperate. The Director of the Social Security Hospital, Dr. Bessy Alvarado, forwarded two requests: The need for a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and a Heart Catheterization Laboratory, both non-existent outside of the capital, Tegucigalpa, about 400 miles away.
It was clear from the beginning that the need for a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit was critical. Babies and small children were housed together with adult patients, -an environment unsuitable to answer their special needs. Proceeding with a grant obtained from Mr. Kimbrell, and using refurbished equipment donated by Carolinas Medical Center, we were able to assemble and deliver an up-to-date, modern, fully equipped 14-bed Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to San Pedro Sula. The Unit was officially opened on February the 15th, 2009 at a ceremony organized and attended by representatives of the Honduran government and the Honduran Social Security Administration. They honored us by playing the Start-Spangled Banner.
The second request was to deliver a self-contained heart catheterization and electrophysiology and echocardiography laboratory to the Social Security Hospital, similar to what we have already installed in Guatemala. This unit, donated by MedCath Corporation and refurbished by The Leon Levine Foundation and our own Hispanic community in Charlotte, is to be named after our departed friend, Juan (Johnny) Lopez-Ibez, a Cuban-American leader of the Hispanic community in Charlotte and who, with his wife Nancy, in many ways promoted our cause in Central America. This will be the first such facility available to the general population of three million people in the Western half of Honduras. When the project is completed, we intend to address the need for cardiac surgery in Honduras which is now serviced by a fledgling heart surgical program in the capital, doing less than 100 cases a year, and by the occasional visits of U.S. teams to CEMESA, the private hospital in San Pedro Sula. Using our Guatemala model, we will hopefully be able to lay the groundwork for a permanent and successful cardiological and heart surgical program in San Pedro Sula. Discussions are ongoing with the Honduran authorities.
During the years we have not ceased our contact with Leonardo Martinez Hospital, now a Pediatric and Maternity Center. Fulfilling several urgent requests of Dr. Jose Samara, Director of the Institution, time after time we have shipped vital items such as cribs, warmers, respirators and monitors. At the present we have two major projects ongoing in San Pedro Sula.
Our current project underway is to inter-phase with the new Burn Institute for Children, now under construction, -another first in Honduras. The construction of the facility is partly funded by the Ruth Paz Foundation for the Children of Honduras. We intend to assist the project by contributing hospital furniture, monitors and other special treating equipment, most of which is donated and refurbished by Carolinas Medical Center.
Our first shipment of monitors, cribs, respirators and a complete operating room already arrived and at the present we are in the process of obtaining additional materials, primarily refurbished and donated by the Carolinas HealthCare System. We are also collaborating with the Burn Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to provide training opportunities for the Honduran staff.
Another modest, nevertheless important, project in Honduras is to update the outpatient clinic servicing the indigent population in the Copen area. The small town of Copen Ruinas is a community center mainly populated by the Chorti Indian. Health services are provided by an undersized outpatient clinic staffed by two young physicians. We have already assisted them with several shipments of medical equipment. With the help of Mr. Don Warren and the Rotary Club of Gastonia, they have embarked in an ambitious project to build a facility four times its present size. We are to furnish it with everything they need. The new facility will hopefully be able to serve the entire population of Copen and the neighboring areas, mostly of the Chorti Indians.
