Visit to San Rafael Hospital

It's never too early to start planning the 2015 missions so our local coordinator, Maira Romero, long-time PazSalud friend and nurse, Rosy Melara, and I went to visit San Rafael Hospital in Santa Tecla in August to talk to with them about the eye surgery mission we would like them to host in May.

We met with the new hospital director, Dr. Yeerles Luis Angel Ramírez, to introduce ourselves and PazSalud and talk about how we could work together in 2015 to provide cataract and pterygium surgeries to the patients of Tamanique (the location of our 2015 General Mission in February).

Then on Kathy Garcia’s recent trip to El Salvador took the opportunity to tour the facilities in greater detail and begin mapping out our patient flow and personnel location.  Rosy, a long-time San Rafael Hospital employee, joined us to introduce us to her former coworkers.  This will be PazSalud’s fifth time working in San Rafael Hospital so at this point it feels like a second home.

Maira, Dr. Yeerles, Rosy

Operating room in San Rafael

Rosy and Kathy touring the operating area

A present for our friends in Santiago de Maria

Many Salvadoran hospitals have allowed us to use an operating room for our week of eye surgeries - and they've never charged us for the space or the time they spend to coordinate with our mission.  The latest of these happy relationships was with the small National Hospital at Santiago de Maria, where we held our April, 2013 eye surgery week.  We always try to return the favor in some way by giving the hospital some useful gifts and a financial donation.  When we asked Dr. Gonzáles, the Director of the Santiago de Maria hospital, what would be helpful to them, he swallowed hard and said that they really, really needed a new autoclave (sterilizer).  Their old one had given up entirely.  We said we'd try, but weren't sure we'd have enough donations to purchase an autoclave of the size they needed.
Happily, when we checked our donations at the end of the year, we did have the funds needed to purchase a new autoclave for Santiago de Maria, and here it is, with one of our favorite nurses showing it off to Kathy Garcia.
The new autoclave will mean sterile instruments for all the surgeries at Santiago de Maria.  We can't think of a better way we could have helped the hospital - and helped the needs of the community they serve.