September Dominican Republic Project

The COVID-19 pandemic has prevented short-term medical mission projects since our January 2020 project to Monte Plata. So, we were pleased and excited to return to the Dominican Republic in September to a hospital in the village of Palenque. One of the primary functions of our project, in addition to helping the underserved with surgical care, was to make sure that we could safely provide care. Our project was a pilot project to begin to reenter the short-term mission field armed with new COVID protocols. There had been a small medical-only project 3 weeks before our arrival, but we were the first to do surgical procedures.

The primary precautions we took focused on three areas.  One was personal protection. We took and used PPE for all our staff.  All of our participants were fully vaccinated and tested negative prior to returning to the country. The second area concerned social distancing. We limited our group to 17 participants to allow more space in our transportation (the yellow school bus), our sleeping accommodations, and our meals. The last precaution had to do with our patients. All patients were tested with a rapid antigen test on the day of surgery. Only one patient of 60 tests done were positive.  So that surgery was cancelled.  All of the patients seen were fully vaccinated.

The good news is that we were able to safely see and provide surgical procedures to 57 patients. The local hospital averages 1 surgery per week normally. We are now focusing our attention on slowly ramping up the projects to the DR and around the world.

Let's Commit to Monte Plata During COVID-19

A pharmacy station at a recent medical missions trip to Monte Plata.

Some of you have probably been wondering about the project and the people of Monte Plata, Dominican Republic. Here is the latest on the project status. Before COVID-19, we had planned to return to Monte Plata in late January for what would have been our 20th annual project to that city. From a planning perspective, all projects since March last year have been canceled. MMI has been canceling projects about 60 to 90 days before the anticipated day of departure. The planning for a project begins shortly after one project ends, but these are different times. So, we pushed the date for our project back to mid-March in hopes of a turnaround with the pandemic.

We plan to do a smaller project (15-16 participants rather than the usual 35-40) to maintain some social distancing. We have also developed new protocols for surgery practice in the post-COVID world and plan to do a surgery-only project. The CDC then placed restrictions on international travel, making it almost impossible to get a team there. The case level in the DR spiked in the locality where we were to go, requiring them to need the beds they had allocated to us. So, this year's project was canceled and rescheduled for January 2022.

We were sad, but it is more tragic for the local Dominican staff. On a large project, they would occasionally employ up to 20 support staff for us. Those folks have gone without support from the projects for a full year now but are still passionate about the mission to their people. The country has had a curfew that restricts travel after 6 pm until 7 am. So, the staff has been giving out the PPE and medications in their warehouse to the hospitals and patients we serve. They are now sending small local teams back to the villages we used to serve to provide physical, mental, and spiritual health care to stand in the gap until the larger projects can resume. We hope to be able to begin to resume projects in late summer or fall of this year to the DR.

But in the meantime, there is something we can do to help. The DR needs funds to help buy medications and supplies and support their staff. Transporting or shipping supplies is very difficult with their new government, but they do have places where they can purchase those things. Would you consider donating to Live Greater Medical so that we can forward it to support the efforts in the Dominican Republic?