Samaritan’s Purse

Recently, Jungle Hospital was added to the list of Samaritan’s Purse hospitals. This means that they will support us by sending us health care providers and supplies. We were very fortunate this year to host five people they sent to us.

Our six month volunteer this year, Joy Dordal, is an RN from Minnesota. She came to us at the end of May and stayed until November. She had training with ultrasound, and was able to assist with many of our prenatal visits. Joy helped us deliver two babies while she was here, and was able to join us on the trip to Las Minas several times. She loved the community aspect of our work here in Rio Viejo, and she leapt at the chance to immerse herself in the culture here. She went above and beyond to bond with the J-Team, frequently joining them for their movie nights and game nights. She was easy to get along with, and we enjoyed having her with us.

Two doctors came to us through Samaritan’s Purse, Dr. Mike Nestor and Dr. Diana Patton. The couple served in our clinic, and we put their talents to good use. Dr. Nestor is a retired ER physician, and Dr. Patton is an OB/GYN. They helped us with outpatient clinic as a team, with Dr. Nestor translating while they cared for patients. Dr. Patton was here to help deliver baby number seventeen, who was named Diana after her. Dr. Patton also performed a surgery to remove keloid scar tissue from a woman’s ear. We hope they enjoyed their time here as much as we enjoyed having them.

We are always in need of help to maintain the equipment that we have here at the clinic, so receiving two biomedical technicians was a blessing. Robbie Greer and Will Roberts were here for only four days, but they managed to check or fix almost every machine in the clinic. They fixed two tabletop autoclave machines, the C-arm x-ray machine, checked all of our monitors and organized the cables, and attempted to repair our baby warmer. After all of that, they still had time to hike down to the river while they were here and spend a day in Roatan before they returned home.

Our partnership with Samaritan’s Purse has brought us many wonderful people, and we look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.