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The Nature of the Beast
It was with great concern that I was told the nurses in Honduras were going
on strike. The strike would start the week of the largest training sessions
and surgery schedule. As we entered the week the nurses continued to work
and I thought that the national strike had not happened. I was wrong. It
was going on, but the union voted and the decision was made not to honor
the strike during the training week and surgical week of the CAMO teams.
On Thursday I was told that the union leader was getting mandates from
the capital to honor the strike; they did not. The next week on Monday
they did start the strike, but the nurses crossed the picket line to help
in the areas CAMO was still working. As the nurses crossed the line they
did so eagerly and embarrassed that we were giving a service and education
to them and that they were being forced to do something that they at that
moment did not agree with. I believe the greatest gift the nurses could
have given CAMO was this statement of crossing the picket line.
It Is Real: The December newsletter talked about the construction of the new distribution center and the office for CAMO. Thanks to 3 major donators who designated the funds for this project. — Dr. Arturo Rendon for the land, our dear friend in Alabama who wishes to remain nameless and McClintock Electric — the facility has been completed. But not without a challenge. On my arrival in Honduras on February 2, 2003, the building had no columns in front, no windows, no door frames, no tile in the bathrooms, no tile in the front entrance, no light fixtures and the second floor did not have the final cement pad poured. The inauguration was scheduled for February 21, 2003, so we put forth a work plan and held the local contractor to this. More Honduran workers were employed to finish the job. The painter finished at midnight on February 20. McClintock Electric of Wooster provided the electrical installation and all the material. Aaron, Scott and Tony spent a total of 3 weeks in Honduras to make this facility one of the best in the country; they also finished on February 21.
CAMO is a diverse group of volunteers, and this diversity helps us to
deliver many needed services and to do it with open minds. Eighty volunteers
worked for four weeks to help in development and counterpart relationships.
Each service below involved counterparts who are Honduran. Our Honduran
friends and counterparts worked beside us to learn new skills and to serve
their own people. Our volunteers came from many specialties and from around
the world. Places represented included Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Puerto Rico, Mexico, England, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina,
Kansas and Arkansas. The volunteers demonstrated such willingness to serve
long hours without complaint, dealing with frustration at times, seeing
so much that can be done and needs to be done. CAMO’s commitment to the
professionals who volunteer and our counterparts in Honduras is to provide
them with the resources they require to solve the problems they are faced
with daily. Each one of you who have donated to us has helped in this developmental
concept.
The Rest of the Story: The period of time that the teams are working gets 99% of the media coverage, but in reality it is a small part of what is actually happening. Every day of the year CAMO is touching 
someone’s life in Honduras.
March 19, 2003: Today someone has been diagnosed with stomach cancer, another young man will have surgery on a broken leg that needs special plates and screw, and a child has received hearing aids. Twenty-five children have been screened for hearing problems. Five dental clinics are operational and each has seen 20 children today. Two people had eye surgery, 6 people had ultrasounds done. Breathing treatments: 30 today. Patients on ventilators today number 4. $1,000 worth of medication was delivered to the health clinic. This is just to mention a few of our services that transpired this day, March 19, 2003. Unsung Heros: In the USA we take for granted the ability to get replacement parts and replace items readily. The silent volunteers who work behind the screen are the biomedical engineers. They meet as a group at the CAMO USA warehouse every Wednesday evening. They fix the incoming donated equipment and also come to Honduras to make sure the equipment is maintained. It is these silent heroes who keep the dental equipment working, the hearing department functioning, the ultrasound machine diagnosing and the breathing machine saving lives. Thank you for being unsung heroes.
The Joy of a Smile It is not about pulling teeth. The dental team is a very special group of people who understand the importance of a simple smile. It takes less time to pull a tooth then it does to clean and do fillings. The CAMO dental team could pull thousand of teeth if that was the goal, but it is not.
It is about teaching children to take care of their teeth. About relieving
pain but allowing the person to still feel good about how they look. To
let them eat with their teeth and not their gums. It is about basic health,
and taking the time to provide a full service to the children and poor
adults in the rural areas.
Do You Have Any Shoes? It is difficult to describe the work that goes on and the profound change that takes place due to the services and equipment donated. Dr. Dona Alvarez an orthopedic surgeon from Oakland, Maryland came to me excited, amazed and with tearful eyes. Her first words were do you have any shoes in the warehouse and then the explosion of explanation. "I did this surgery yesterday, it is a painful surgery, the 40 year old farmer had broken his upper leg (femur) and it had not been fixed due to not having the plates, nails etc.…. He has been unable to work for a year and his leg was about 3 inches shorter, well yesterday I placed a bone graft with plates and screws to the bone. Today I went into the ward to check on him. He immediately asks me when he could go home. In the states people are in so much pain they will not put weight on a leg after surgery for several days, so I told him when he could walk to the door of the ward he could go home. The man got up and walked, beading with sweat and pale, put he did it." Kathy I am going to let him go home but we need shoes for him. I spent about two hours with this gentleman his name is Pastor and his wife. Sharing time with them I find out they have 2 children and he has not been able to work due to his broken leg, his wife will wash clothes for the next year to pay the fee of a pick-up truck that brought him to us and returned him home. They live three hours from Santa Rosa. I want you to really think about this. On faith they came to us. It was not a sure thing that we could fix the leg or that there would be surgical space for him. His wife committed to work for the next year just for the chance of fixing her husbands leg. What an honor to be able to provide a service for people that have no safety net other then their great inner strength and faith. Changes The Audiometry and Prosthetic departments have been moved to CAMO’s new facility. CAMO would like to extend a special thank you to Teleton for allowing us to use their facility 
for the last 7 years and their assistance in the development of these services.
The move of Audiometry went smoothly and the department is up and running. We have been able to do a lot of work in the past month in our new facility. The hearing screening programs in the schools are functioning with 50 children per week being screened. By October all the children in first grade will have been tested for hearing impairment. The teachers are becoming more involved with the students that are hearing impaired. We have seen a drastic increase in the number of patients coming to us for hearing impairment. The prosthetic lab is being prepared; it will be in the area that was the old offices and warehouse space located on the grounds of the public hospital. This is located 100 yards from our new facility and will allow us to take care of new amputees and work hand in hand with the orthopedic department at the public hospital. We expect this move to happen by May 1, 2003.
What Is It All About? 
It was a normal day of getting patients ready for surgery and follow-up
with the previous day’s consults. Dr. Paul Crowley was concerned about
a patient named Selvinda Esperanza. She was only 13, but her face showed
a life of pain and sadness. My first impression of her was a very small,
thin, pale child struggling to exist. She had bedsores on both shoulders
and on the bony areas of her back. An open area on her lower abdomen was
draining urine. Selvinda had been struck by a car February 7, 2003 and
now, with a broken pelvis and internal injuries, she looked as if she was
slowly and painfully dying. Dr. Crowley made the decision  to
take a look and did surgery on Selvinda. On February 26, 2003, a surgery
was done involving repairs of a fistula and cleaning up a lot of internal
infection. After the surgery the orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Dona Alvarez,
followed up with the pelvic fractures. Sara, a young volunteer, started
to encourage Selvinda on a daily basis to get out of bed and start walking.
Vitamins were provided and the recovery began; we had all but forgotten
about her after she left the Hospital. Recently Selvinda visited the Fundacion
CAMO. She no longer had the face of pain, and there were no signs of the
dying Selvinda that I saw exactly one month before. She walked in with
her father, flashed a smile that would melt you and said thank you. That
"thank you" is for each one of you who are involved with supporting CAMO
and the work that is being done.
January 1, 2002-December 31, 2002
equipment and the training to care for themselves. This is the dream — that each specialty has what they need both in education and supplies to render the care at hand. Closing Comments In all my years of experience (24 years) in Honduras I have never seen so many people asking for work. Professional university graduates are asking to clean floors or do anything for a wage. The lack of industry and commerce is staggering. The wage for a secretary is L2,500 ($144 ) per month. The average wage for social a worker; for example is L3,500 ($202) per month. A professional nurse makes L7,000 ($404) per month. Housing is about L3000.00 ($173) per month. For one person to eat basic food for a month you need about L800.00 ($46). Sales tax is 12%. The world is living in a different condition than the USA. I ask, during these times of war and self interest, that we do not forget that we have it all. It doesn’t hurt to share what excess we have. If we do not, I as a citizen of the USA, feel the world will have reason to hate us. In Service,
If you are interested in speaking for CAMO, please let
us know. We have a Power Point program computerized with music. The song
was composed and sung by local talent Becca Rossiter. If you need a program
for your group or club, call the office at 330-683-5956.
Calendar of events: April 30 -- CAMO fiscal year end
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finding solutions to problems or preventing problems from happening. The
fight to give medical care to a population with 70% under-employed or unemployed
can be overwhelming. So I seldom get to have hands-on experiences and see
the result of the days, months, and years of work that has been invested.
On my return to Honduras on Feb 2, 2003, Mercedes had a left mastectomy
with lymph node removal. It left her left chest and left armpit concave.
She left a message for me at the Honduras office, a request for help in
finding a left breast prosthesis; I called the USA CAMO office manager
Helen for help. Who just happened to be sitting there? None other than
Marcia Murphy, a mammography technologist who would be arriving in Honduras
with the CAMO team in 3 days. Marcia went the extra miles to get the prosthetics
from the American Cancer Society and arrived in Honduras with the prosthetics.
