Surgical Father/Son Team Return from Honduras
For the last seven years, two members of our Leigh hospital staff have donated time and expertise in rural areas of Honduras for the sake of caring for indigent children. Dr. Jonathan Jacobs and surgical nurse, Patricia Weeks, have traveled with a group from Richmond, the International Hospital for Children sponsored plastic surgical team, for the sake of humanitarian missions to this Central American impoverished area. This year was special. Jacobs’ son, a plastic surgical resident in New York at NYU, accompanied them along with another surgeon from Richmond, and a group of nurse anesthetists and an anesthesiologist. It was the first time for them to operate together as a father/son duo. They found a large variety of surgical problems in need of plastic surgery care.
The International Hospital for Children has sponsored this trip to Honduras for the last 5 years, but over the last nine years this team has been providing care to the area. Devastated in 1999 by Hurricane Mitch, the area became especially needy and the Richmond group started this project soon thereafter. The primary focus is to provide care for congenital and traumatic deformities for children, but that focus has expanded to include surgical care for all kinds of problems both in children and adults. This year over 70 children were cared for with facial and palatal clefts, genitourinary deformities, burn scar contractures and other maladies. The group is interestingly sponsored through donations to the central office in Richmond. A major benefactor is David Ortiz, the first baseman for the Boston Red Sox whose roots are in the Dominican Republic. Heart teams from IHC have been traveling there for years. For information about the International Hospital for Children please see web site www.healachild.org. The organization maintains viable and active missions in all the surgical specialties to a variety of Central American and Caribbean countries.
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