Leaving for Quito

Today I leave for Quito. I will meet Juan there, who has been busy arranging the upcoming week's mission. The "team",students from Dartmouth and NY, will be joining us tomorrow.
This week's mission is a bit different than the last few. We will stay in the Quito area and partner with Tierra Nueva, a local hospital for the indigenous people.
We have offered to help provide medical screenings in their outreach villages for a week. I will be seeing about 25 females a day for physicals and gynecological screenings, and we will have a second doctor (Lance Evans or an Ecuadorian physician that we subcontract) - and they will see an additional 30 patients (mostly children and men). We hope that this partnership will open opportunities for us to work side by side with Ecuadorian providers, and learn from each other- ways that we can grow MEDLIFE and meet our goals and their needs. They have offered their pathology lab to read our Pap smears, which will offer us quick turn around of results!

I have only met one of the students (other than Juan- President of UMAINE MEDLIFE) - so I am anxious to meet the rest of them. As I understand, some are pre-med and some are medical students - this should be a great mix. I hope to see Blanca, Martha and some of our other 'support' personel and friends. I would also hope to get caught up on how Maria ( our young, malnourished patient that was quite ill w/tuberculosis) is doing.

Well, I'm off to Boston to get a plan!

Adios
Terry