Missoula Medical Aid
2014-15
basic need, big difference. We work with rural and impoverished communities in Honduras as they seek to improve health and access to health care.
Our Partners, Ourselves Missoula Medical Aid started in October, 1998, in the offices of Nightingale Nursing in Missoula, as a response to the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. We’ve thrived because of the support and goodwill of the many hundreds of volunteers and contributors, and because every dollar and day of labor supplied by our donors and volunteers is multiplied by the labor and resouces of our Honduran partners at Save the Children, the La Espernaza Lions Club, and the La Esperanza Hospital. Our partners drive our medical teams, house us, feed us, fill out our paper work, and do follow up care for our patients when we are gone. • We buy the chimneys; they teach people how to build more efficient cook stoves. • We buy the heifers and seeds, they teach farmers how to take care of their livestock, grow the seeds, and sell their harvest.
• W e help buy the food; they train mothers and fathers in childhood development and nutrition. • We buy the fluoride; they give it to school children once a week. • We buy the toothbrushes, they teach dental hygiene. • We pay for staff in the Lion’s Club low-income dental and eye clinics, our partners manage and supply the clinics. In short, after seventeen years, we’ve gotten very efficient at channelling your donations into general health and orthopedic clinics, dental and eye clinics, and life-changing agricultural and nutrition projects. Teamwork has made the communities we visit healthier places to live and work. Thank you to all of our Honduran partners, and to all of our supporters here in the United States.
David Cates Executive Director, MMA
We are Volunteers and we’d like to meet you
Missoula Medical Aid has just two quarter-time employees, so volunteers do the bulk of our work here at home and in Honduras. In fact, we’ve sent 289 different volunteers to Honduras. They include a urologist, an ophthalmologist, a pharmacist, family practitioners, dentists, RN’s, an oncologist, E.R. docs, internists, an ENT, anesthesiologists, a pulmonologist, PA’s, orthopedists, ObGyn’s, a general surgeon, NP’s, hospitalists, surgical technicians, pediatricians, a radiologist, EMT’s, and CNA’s. Here are three of our volunteers:
Sara Heineman, Family Nurse Practitioner, Missoula County Health Department, teams 28, 45, 47. “In Honduras the provider has to rely on assessment skills. There is no CT scan. You have to listen to what the patient tells you, hear the whole story, and figure out what’s going on. It’s a different providerpatient relationship than at home.” Andrea Vannatta, MD, pediatrics, Grant Creek Family Medicine, team 44. “I went into medicine to help underserved people. You could do that here, but it puts life into perspective when you go to a place like Honduras and see the conditions people live under day in and day out. I don’t necessarily make any huge diagnoses there, but for those people we see, we make a warm connection. It inspires me to do good things at home. Because, why not? And because it allows me as provider to not get defeated. It has made me a more resilient care provider.” Andrew Pucket, MD, orthopedics, Missoula Bone and Joint, teams 17, 21, 24, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, and 47. “We’ve been able to build and create our own ongoing orthopedic surgery program, visiting the same hospital every year. It’s very fulfilling. You take care of the same families, and you build a connection with the Honduran medical staff. Now they have us over to dinner. It’s gratifying, and Missoula Medical Aid is now woven in the fabric of my year.” 2
We’ve set up approximately 420 general medicine clinics in 17 years, and seen more than 80,000 patients. Why do we do this over and over again?
Because the first step in international aid is just showing up. Spending time. Being there. And these clinics are where we get to know Hondurans, one after another, where we see their faces and they see ours. It’s in these clinics our patients have taught us about their lives and their livelihoods. And it is in these clinics we’ve formed the relationships on which all of our out-of-clinic health improvement projects are based. And most importantly, of course, we set up these clinics because people need them. When our medical teams push desks and chairs around in a little mountain school house to make three or four exam tables and a pharmacy, people come. By the hundreds. Women with children on their back, in their arms, or holding hands while they walk through the muddy furrowed fields or along forest paths. They come for a chance to be looked at, to be heard, and to get medical treatment for common maladies and referral help when they have illnesses that require follow-up care.
We say Yes —
how partnerships make our money grow The Lions club building in La Esperanza had a unstaffed dental clinic. The Lions club building had an eye clinic staffed only on Saturdays. The club members saw the work we were doing in the area and made us a proposition: If we’d raise money in Montana to pay for local staff, the club would supply and manage the two clinics and keep them open every day. We said yes. Now, eight years later, these clinics are open five days a week. The cost to us is $7,800 annually. The result is that this year 2,900 people—people who would not have been able to afford a private clinic—got their teeth cleaned, a cavity filled, got glasses, or taken to San Pedro Sula to have a cataract removed. The government of Honduras, recognizing a good thing, now adds to staff with a dental intern, and with money for increased hours for the eye technician. Two thousand nine hundred people. For just seven thousand eight hundred dollars. 3
We say yes—this is how a dollar from Montana goes a long way in Honduras.
Rural development, healthy development The three rural areas we visit yearly in Honduras are marked by impassable roads and impoverished schools. Young people have little opportunity to change their lives beyond moving to cities ravaged by gang violence, or immigrating illegally to the states. Families subsist on what they can grow, and the very little they earn. Many live in mud houses. Many sleep on dirt floors. They have coughs, headaches, rashes, parasites, chronic malnutrition, tooth decay and high blood pressure.
for dozens of children under age six, and for pregnant women and lactating mothers. Our grants support programs that reduce incidence of illness, and improve family income. Kids are going to school who couldn’t attend in the past. Groups of women and young people are taking on farming or small business projects that are giving them an income for the first time.
So in addition to treating symptoms, we partner with Save the Children and various local governments to teach farmers how to grow, cook, and market a wider variety of crops. To help farmers buy cows so families can drink milk, and make and sell cheese. To teach organic farming and safer use of pesticides, and help families build improved cook stoves that use less wood and reduce smoke in homes. We also work with schools and local dentists to teach dental hygiene and provide regular fluoride treatments, toothbrushes, and toothpaste for children. We sponsor two primarily volunteer-run nutrition centers where parents learn about early childhood development, prepare a nutritious meal
Ortho teams: The first rule is to show up In the fall of 2002, when we sent our first general medical team to La Esperanza, we saw patients in our rural clinics with crooked arms or legs from broken bones that had not healed properly, or with hands that had been injured and lost function We asked and were told that the local hospital had no orthopedic specialist. We talked to the director of the hospital. Could we bring an orthopedist down with us next time? Could he work in the hospital? In the first few years we didn’t know what to bring; they didn’t know what to expect. Mobs of patients clogged the hallways and burdened the hospital facilities and staff. But the first rule of international aid is to show up. And we did, year after year, sometimes twice 4
a year. And thanks to the leadership in the hospital, and our volunteers’ persistence, every trip has gotten better. Now, with time and the good fellowship developed between the hospital staff and our volunteers, we’re a hand in a glove. The result has been thousands of orthopedic consults, and hundreds of surgeries and procedures. It’s not enough, of course. There are more cases than we can handle in the short time we’re there. But what we do—what our orthopedic volunteers do for their patients—is life-changing.
What We Did This Year: By the numbers h Sent three medical teams (54 volunteers total)
to Honduras that did medical checkups and gave basic medications and vitamins to 4,313 patients, did 469 cervical cancer screenings and 80 dental consults;
h Sent two orthopedic teams that each worked for a
week and did approximately 125 orthopedic consults in the La Esperanza hospital, resulting in 49 surgeries;
h Left funds so that 150 of our patients—including those
74 patients to go to Hospital Fraternidad del Club de Leones in San Pedro Sula to see an eye specialist, and for 51 of those patients to get cataract surgery;
h Gave nursing scholarships to four low-income students; h Helped supply two mostly volunteer-run nutrition and
early childhood development centers that fed a good meal to 80 children, five days a week, and taught poor families about nutrition and early childhood development.
who had irregular pap results—could get access to follow-up care after we left;
h Gave grants that helped build improved cooking stoves,
grow grain and vegetables, build a corn mills, and support a variety of farmer trainings that taught subjects from solid waste management to pest and disease management in apiaries.
h Provided fluoride, toothpaste, and toothbrushes, and oral hygiene instruction, to 3,020 school children; h Staffed the La Esperanza Lions Club Dental and Eye
Clinics. The dental clinic served 1,929 patients, and the eye clinic did more than a thousand eye exams, and arranged for
Financial Report
5
Balance Sheet at 6/30/2015 ASSETS Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,628 Marketable securities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28,501 Total Assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41,129 LIABILITIES & EQUITY Liabilities Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,049 Total Liabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,049 Equity Unrealized gain on investments . . . . . . .11,412 Unrestricted net assets . . . . . . . . . . . . 44,247 Net income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -16,579 Total Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39,080 Total Liabilities & Equity . . . . . . . . . . 41,129
Income and Expenses Year Ending 6/30/2015 INCOME Events & fundraising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51,103 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95,405 Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Total Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146,624 EXPENSE Events & miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,939 Management & general . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,551 Payroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28,759 Program services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118,954 Total Expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163,203 Net Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -16,579
BIG DIFFERENCE.
To learn how you can help, call 1-888-298-1249, email: missoulamedicalaid1998@gmail.com or visit our website at http://missoulamedicalaid.org
basic need. Missoula Medical Aid PO Box 903 Missoula, Montana 59806 Board of Directors President: Ric Mcleod Treasurer: David J. Ryan, BS JD Secretary Maureen Hoffmann, RN Richard Barrett, PhD Shull Lemire, MD Kristin Rauch, MD Andrew Puckett, MD Janice Givler, MD Russ Parsons Ana Greer Brian Morgan Paula Colledge, MS PA-C Martin Horn Executive Director: David Cates Operations Manager, Jordan Labbe