Dr. Paul Crowley, Wooster urologist, is getting ready to make his eighth trip to Honduras with Central American Medical Outreach, or CAMO, a medical missionary group based in Orrville.   He leaves Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005 as part of the second wave of volunteers who will travel to Hospital de Occidente in Santa Rosa de Copan.  The first group leaves Saturday, February 19, 2005 and includes the  dental, eye, plastic surgery, neonatal and fetal monitoring teams.  Over the next three weeks, about sixty-five CAMO volunteers will travel to Santa Rosa.  Together they represent twenty medical specialties and allied support services.  Twenty-one of these volunteers are from Wayne County. 

CAMO, which was founded in 1992 by Kathy Tschiegg, RN of Orrville, maintains a year-round presence in Honduras, providing equipment, supplies and training for Honduran medical personnel.  Medical groups travel there several times a year, the most recent trip being in October, 2004.   That trip included local residents Titus Yoder, respiratory therapist, and Dr. John Weiman, obstetrics and gynecology.  Tschiegg spends about six months in Honduras each year to administer the program. 

During his week in Honduras, Dr. Crowley will both treat and teach.  These are vital functions in a area where there are no urologists and the general surgeons are ill-equipped to care for patients with serious urological problems.  Hospital de Occidente, a public 200-bed hospital, serves all of western Honduras, with a population of about one million people.  Dr. Crowley will be working with Dr. Juan Carlos Cardona, a general surgeon, and will see mostly men with prostate problems.  Specialist care is generally available only in the major cities and many urological problems go untreated because access to medical care is so limited. 

My first trip with CAMO eight years ago was a real learning experience, said Dr. Crowley.  Working in Honduras has made me more aware as a surgeon of how much I depend on support services, he said. We take so much for granted.  I went down there knowing what I could do but I didn’t know what they could do. 

For example, I got there and found there was no sterilized water, he said.  We had to boil our own and keeping it sterile was difficult.  There weren’t enough nurses in the recovery room to take care of my patients and the ones that were there weren’t familiar with my procedures.   I soon learned, he said, that I couldn’t care for patients like I do at home.  If you want to be successful in Honduras, he indicates, you have to go down and see what the people need, then do what you can to help them with whatever resources are available. 

One of the big improvements planned by CAMO for Hospital de Occidente is a new electrical system.  This wll be done over the next six months with the help of McClintock Electric and the Noble Foundation, both of Wooster.  This comes on the heels of last year’s project, which was to install a modern telephone system in the hospital.  This project is still underway. 

Improving the hospital’s electrical system will dramatically improve health care delivery, says Dr. Crowley.  He tells of the time when he was in the middle of a prostate surgery and the electricity went out.  While the hospital had a back-up generator,the power never got to the surgery rooms.  The surgery had to be stopped with the patient still on the table and the patient stabilized until power was restored. 

When Dr. Crowley gets off the plane in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, he’ll look through the glass and wave at the members of the first-week team who are waiting to board the airplane for the trip home.  Dr. Crowley will be assisted in surgery by Nancy Likens, RN, a surgical nurse from Wooster Community Hospital, who is also a veteran CAMO volunteer.  Likens will be in the first CAMO group to travel to Honduras and will assist Dr. Lester Mohler, a plastic surgeon from Sunbury, Ohio, before Dr. Crowley arrives.