Rescue Task Force establishing/maintaining Medical Clinics & medical support projects: Delivering medical teams to remote, deep jungle villages in Honduras and the construction of full service medical and dental clinics that are giving local Moskito Indian villagers their first ever full time medical care.

We also deliver millions of dollars worth of overseas shipping containers filled with wheelchairs, pharmaceuticals, medical and dental equipment to our projects in Cambodia, El Salvador and Honduras. The cargo is donated by manufactures; we pay the freight and oversee the distribution to the end user recipients.

In addition to the clinic construction and water filter teams, throughout the year we field volunteer medical missions deep into the jungles of Honduras. These teams are made up of U.S. and Honduran lay people, doctors, and dentists.

Our first three medical facilities in the jungle of Honduras’ Miskito Coast are completed. After building in Uhsan and Lacunca we pressed further into the jungle to the village area of Sih Honduras, a region on the Coco River that divides Honduras and Nicaragua. Working with the Honduran Ministry of Health we have now completed construction of that facility which brings full time medical service to people who have NEVER had any care, of any sort.

This clinic facility is an International Project in that it also serves about 1,000 people of Nicaragua.

As with our previously constructed clinic sites; this one serves about 2,000 Honduran Miskito Indians. Clinic sites are villages selected by locations that are on river ‘hubs’ and are villages accessible to isolated families with one day travel by dug-out canoe vs. the current six days of paddling canoes to medical help.

A requirement of a given site location is that the local villagers commit to the vast volunteer labor required for construction. RTF provides the finances for the construction. The local populace provides all labor: Harvesting and planing wood for lumber, dredging sand from distant creeks for fabrication of cement blocks and the physical construction.

RTF equips the clinics with mechanical equipment such as hand-crank O.B. tables, dental chairs, furnishings, sinks, and all of the medical instruments and tools. Once all is ready the local Ministry of Health then provides the resident full-time, professional medical staff.

Immediate future projects in La Moskitia, Honduras include construction of the next clinic in concert with the Ministry of Health’s priority list and ‘outfitting’ and equipping two medical clinic facilities that have been constructed by the Government of Honduras, but have no equipment. (“No equipment” means that the facility has only: a roof, four walls, and a wooden chair.)

Measurable Results: Life where there was death! In Uhsan, where our first clinic has been operation for the past year, the resident ‘doctor’ sees about 5 consults per day. When we first came to that area our team physician treated over 300 patients during a several day visit. In Uhsan, a farmer was recently bitten by a poisonous snake. Today, because we built a clinic in that village, that farmer is alive and providing for his family.

In the village of Kruta (a possible future site) a same snake bit a relief worker some weeks ago who was passing through the area. That person died. Our clinics improve lives as well as saves lives lives.

Nadia, an eleven year old girl, lives in the jungle village of Lacunca. Nadia came to one of our day clinics for help with her “stomach problem”. Nadia, we found, had an umbilical hernia. Carrying water, doing stoop labor in the fields, and washing clothes in the creek – all of the chores that children do, were exacerbating her problem.

To work she had to hold her umbilicus (belly button) to keep her intestine from protruding out. The umbilicus has developed a four inch external sack. Eventually the hernia would strangulate and then in about 72 hours little Nadia would die a horrid death from peritonitis.

Today, because of our clinic project Nadia is well. The hernia is repaired she leads a perfectly normal life.

We also deliver millions of dollars worth of overseas shipping containers filled with wheelchairs, pharmaceuticals, medical and dental equipment to our projects in Cambodia, El Salvador and Honduras. The cargo is donated by manufactures; we pay the freight and oversee the distribution to the end user recipients.