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Conventus Cares: Dr Marjorie Jones' Mission to Peru
In early May, pediatrician and Conventus Board Member Dr. Marjorie Jones spent two weeks in southern Peru as part of a medical mission team. Every year one of Dr. Jones’ colleagues, Dr Julio Sotelo, directs a mission to his Peruvian hometown of Abancay. Abancay is a beautiful, colorful city in southern Peru, located in the central Andes, west of Cuzco. It is the capital of the Apurimac Region and has a population of over 60,000. The Abancay Missions are medical, surgical, dental and educational missions and are philanthropic endeavors of the Peruvian American Medical Society (PAMS). Each two-week mission treats over 2,000 patients, provides more than 3,000 free prescriptions of donated medicines and performs over 200 life-saving and life-changing surgeries for patients with little other access to healthcare. The mission teams are made up of volunteers, all of who are responsible for funding their own trips. The mission was sponsored in part by Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, who not only gave a small stipend to each of the doctors on the mission team but provided their immunizations as well. “We took one suitcase of our own belongings and one filled with medications and supplies,” Dr. Jones said. “As a pediatrician, it was children’s medicines in my case. I got two of my friends who are pharmacists to donate medicine, and I donated medicine myself. In the end I had about 40 lbs of cough medicine, vitamins, gauze pads, allergy medication, asthma inhalers. As you can imagine, it isn’t easy getting a suitcase full of medication through customs in a foreign country, especially when you don’t speak the language real well, but in the end I convinced them the supplies were to help needy people in their country and they relented.” Once at the clinic site in Abancay, Dr. Jones was struck by the beauty of the area, and the desperation of its people. “So many of the children were malnourished and thin,” she recalled. “The missions do such important work, but it is frustrating in that there is just so much to be done. We simply didn’t have enough medication to go around or enough manpower, but we did everything we could. We worked from 8a.m. until 6:30p.m. most days with just a short break for lunch. It was tiring but so rewarding. “People come from all over to the clinic. They come down from the surrounding mountains, and they just walk so many hours to get to us, and they are so grateful for the help they receive. As I said, it is hard work, but it is very well worth it. I hope to be able to go again next year.”
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