The mission in short

It was not really easy for me to write something about the medical checks everyday. So I decided to summarise the mission.

13-3-17 I went to Puerto Plata and the same day the rest of the team arrived at the Puerto Plata airport.

I was picked up by Cristina, chairwoman of Bocas Sanas Latino America and Arantxa one of our translators/volunteers.

We went quickly to the airport to pick up the rest of the team with Andrea, another volunteer/ translator.

Here we are checking if all the things came in good order. All the medicine we used was from Dominican Republic. This way we support the locals and they are in the native language. In this case Spanish. The thing I love most from MCC is that they work according to WHO protocols. Those protocols are known worldwide and therefore you can work without any problems with local doctors!

We stayed at dreamview estate. The property from Cristina and her husband Frans. Simply beautiful!

Thanks for your hospitality.  

14-3-17 the mission started!
We checked at 2 places: Llanos de Perez (Los Feliz) and Ingenio. This day we checked about 150 kids. That day we saw a lot of Haitian children. I met here an old classmate too, dr. Ventura! We ate some empanadas. It was delicious!!

The next day  15-3-17 we went to Baraguana. This was a really nice location. The carrousel was supported by local doctors. They added a vaccination station to the carrousel! At the end we received a great and delicious lunch in the community. We drank a hand-crafted chocolate milk.

 

  

16-3-17 We went to los Caños. It was a great community. We saw a really sad case here. Fortunately it is now being treated! We got a treat from the mayor's village.

17-3-17 We went to the Javillar. It was a very small location but this was not a problem for us! We made our carrousel and it worked out perfectly. We get a lot of help from our chauffeur José... super enthusiastic with the toothbrushing station! This day we did not see many children because of the rain. At the end we had some fun with music on the street!

18-3-17 We checked in two locations: el Cupey and Sabana del Corozo (La gata). These were great locations. The community was really enthusiastic too. We got some tea from an old and retired doctor. At the end we were invited to dance in a local place.

20-3-17 was our last day. It was in Maimon (Clinica CEPREMIDA). It was a "crazy" day. That day most of the team went back to the Netherlands. We had some tension too because the flight was delayed with high probability of departing the next day. Thus we checked from about 9:00 to 12:00.

As you know the Dominican Republic is wel known from its beautiful beaches, so after hard work we had some time to relax!

Overall we checked about 600 kids. We wanted to see more, but the kids that were checked were the children that needed it the most, so we are happy!. There are more than 20 who needed to be refered and a lot more who need to see the dentist. I'm really happy with the support of local colleagues who are go to help us with the follow up.

Ines, Miguette, Saskia, Oscar, Arantza and Eske travelled the next day via Punta Cana because of problems with TUI. Carmen, Dorien, Judith and Toine stayed in the Dominican republic for some days. I went to my family for some quality time. My sister Cristina is not in the pictures. She lives in USA. But we talked a lot via Skype!





Big thanks to:
CEPREDIMA : dr. Olivares, dr. Silverio, dr. Peña and Cristina
MCC: Ines, Miguette, Oscar, Saskia, Toine, Judith, Carmen, Dorien, Eske, Arantxa, Stephen and Robert
Translators: Arantxa, Madelon, Andrea and Frans
Pharmacy: Henny
Locations: Nina, Ana, Junior, Cristina, dr. Ventura, dr. Rosset and all the medical interns and nurses
Chauffeur: José
Dreamview: Cristina, Frans, Rosa, Nena and Junior
Dominican colleagues: dr. Vittini, dr. Alburquerque, dr. Burgos, dr. Guzman and dr. Sanchez

Oh oh Spanish accent

The name of this post is quite funny, but thanks to my Spanish accent I can make this dream come true.

As you read in another post "Me... a foreign doctor in the Netherlands", it was not really easy to find my place as a doctor in Holland.
One day I thought "if I only could talk perfect Dutch, maybe it would be different for me". As soon as I had that thought, I felt some kind of pain in the middle of my chest. Quickly I understood that my Spanish accent made me unique. I got peace and freedom.

Few days later at work in the LUMC I had one of the hospitalized patients who recognized my Spanish accent. He told me very enthousiast that he had been on a medical mission in Bolivia. I found this really fantastic and ofcourse I asked him boldly what about a mission in the Dominican Republic.

He was also very enthusiastic! Because of the doctor-patient relation of that moment it was not really ethical to do "business" right over there. I adviced him to contact me after he got discharged. Few months later we got in contact and this is how this mission started... and all thanks to this beautiful and funny Spanish accent!!!

 Thanks Oscar, all the MCC team, Bocas Sanas Latino America and CEPREDIMA for making this dream come true and to help the children in the Dominican Republic.