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Mission Statement :

To provide humanitarian assistance to victims of poverty and disaster

History:

Missoula Medical Aid was born in the fall of 1998, when Hurricane Mitch paused for a week over Central America, killing nine thousand people and leaving tens of thousands homeless. Bill Woody and a handful of Nightingale Nursing employees heard reports of the disaster, and immediately began soliciting money, medicine, and volunteers. Within weeks, a first team of Montana doctors, nurses, social workers, and translators were at work in San Lorenzo, Honduras, caring for victims both in the city hospital and in surrounding communities.

Since then, Missoula Medical Aid has two or three teams a year to Honduras, and one to Nicaragua. While waiting patients crowd in the doorway and push to look through the windows, our volunteers set up clinics in mud-wall homes, in school houses, or churches. Among wandering roosters and dogs, under hanging bats, we've cared for over 5000 patients, mostly children. Hundreds of women have been screened for cervical cancer, and hundreds of adults and children have received dental care.

In the San Lorenzo hospital, Missoula Medical Aid volunteers have done surgeries and delivered babies. We've cleaned up piles of needles and medical waste in the yard, piles combed through daily by barefoot children looking for aluminum cans. Then we worked with hospital staff to develop the first hazardous waste disposal system. Our volunteers rebuilt an ambulance and trained firemen in emergency first aid. We've helped rebuild a school, worked with refugees to build homes, and set up a local tool library. Despite the recovery that has taken place since Mitch, however, Honduras remains the poorest countries in our hemisphere. The average Honduran family survives on the equivalent of 700 dollars a year. Malnutrition, parasitic infections, anemia, and other preventable illness accompany this kind of poverty.

So the work continues. Our experience and the relationships we've built with Save the Children-Honduras, have helped us focus our efforts. We have become a conduit through which the generous people of Western Montana and our friends across the country can help send trained people and resources to a place where both are rare.