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 of last year have been cancelled. MMI has been cancelling
project about 60 to 90 days prior to the anticipated day of departure. Actually, 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 turn
around with the pandemic.
We are planning to do a smaller project (15-16 participants rather than the usual 35-40) in order to maintain some social
distancing. We also have developed new protocols for practicing in the post-COVID
world for surgery and were planning to do a surgery only project. Travel restrictions
were then placed on international travel by the CDC that made it almost impossible
to get a team there and the case level in the DR spiked in the locality where we
were to go which required them to need the beds that they had allocated to us. So
the project was cancelled for this year and was rescheduled for January 2022.
We were and are 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 that were in their warehouse to the hospitals and patients that we have
served. They are now sending small local teams back to the villages we used to
serve to provide physical, mental and spiritual health care in order 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. They needs funds to
help to buy medications and supplies and support their staff. Transporting or
shipping supplies is very difficult with the new government that they have, but they
do have places that they can purchase those things. Would you consider making a
donation to Live Greater Medical that we can forward to support the efforts in the
Dominican Republic?