Surgical Outreach for the Americas

Every year for the past 15 years impoverished people in and near Santiago, Dominican Republic, underwent surgery for various types of hernias, a common medical problem often linked to the agrarian lifestyle of our patients. This care was made possible by our dedicated surgical team of surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, and other health care professionals. In the early years, our organization was funded largely by the Barnes Jewish Hospital Foundation. Currently, beginning in 2014, year-round efforts to raise money and organize our trips began. As we enter our 16th year in operation, we now travel yearly to both a outpatient surgical clinic in the Dominican Republic, to a rural hospital in El Salvador, and to a hospital in Catacamas, Honduras to provide similar hernia and gall bladder surgery for those without access to health care. In February of 2017, we completed our 1000th surgical procedure during our time in the Dominican Republic, a goal we are very proud to have achieved. We have now added rural Belize to our list of sites requesting/requiring our surgical services, and our first trip to this region (Punta Gorda, Belize) was successfully completed in April, 2024. This summer (2024) we hope to travel to a rural hospital in Peru to evaluate another site where surgery is not currently offered to patients.