In late April 2015, I had the opportunity to travel to Belize with the organization Healing Hands Abroad (HHA) in order to provide medical care to local citizens. HHA focuses on providing surgical, anesthetic and pain management services to the communities it serves. Like other parts of Belize, San Ignacio is a city where people can access basic medical care, but advanced and specialized care often comes at a prohibitively high cost or is unavailable altogether. The patients that we saw were in need of basic surgical procedures, and many suffered from a variety of chronic pain conditions.
A typical day consisted of us traveling to Belmopan, the capital city, to deliver anesthesia and perform operations on those patients we selected as being able to help given our resources. Most patients were ASA Physical Status 1 or 2 and had obtained necessary testing, such as EKG or blood testing,...
