GUATEMALA ENDOSCOPY INITIATIVE:
Hospitalito Atitlán, Santiago, Sololá Region, Guatemala By Bryan G. Sauer, MD, MSc, FACG
IN FEBRUARY 2019, I was part of a group of gastroenterologists, endoscopy nurses, and a nurse anesthetist who traveled to Santiago Atitlán, Sololá, Guatemala to the Hospitalito Atitlán to provide endoscopy care. The trip was the culmination of work and planning that started several years in advance. My wife is from El Salvador and I speak Spanish and I had been looking for an opportunity to serve others in Central America. I meet Dr. Michael Dougherty when he applied for GI fellowship at UVA and he shared about his experience as an internist at the Hospitalito Atitlán in 2015-2016 as part of Penn’s Global Health Program, so that helped move things along. I visited in April 2016 to evaluate the facilities and to connect with local physicians to understand the endoscopy needs in the region and began fundraising and seeking donations of endoscopic equipment.
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