Assignment Chiapas

We would like to draw everyone's attention to the big picture.  If we are not careful our vision will become too limited and small.  There is great hunger, illness, illiteracy and poverty in the suburbs and mountains of Mexico. The hills and small villages are filled with  small empty clinic buildings because there is only 1 doctor for every 12,000 persons.  (most of these are clustered in the larger cities).  People are dying daily from preventable causes. Campo is one of them. Living conditions are deplorable. We have seen better animal pens than what some of these people live in.

We understand the infant mortality rate may run as high as 80% in some of these areas. No one knows for sure because the government does not report any under age 5.  Even adults are dying from pulmonary and digestive infections, diarrhea,  and other preventable causes. Most of the area water is contaminated and not fit for human consumption.

 Many people do not trust the government are afraid to go into government hospitals.  There is a private hospital at Alta Mirano that is fully equipped, has visiting doctors from all over the world, is seeing between 30 and 100 patients at day from all over Chiapas and running at full capacity. They are seeking assistance. The Campo Santiago (Teopisca) area is twice the size of Alta Mirano, making it a good choice for another hospital.

 There is a small hospital at Oventic that is poorly equipped and has no doctors. People go from there to Alta Mirano.  A group went into the small remote town of Bedimedito some years ago and built a big beautiful, fully equipped facility there.  During the uprising, a doctor got into an argument with a family and was killed.  The hospital was abandoned for a number of years.  But now it is up and running again and has a staff of eight resident doctors.  The moral of this story is that the fully equipped hospital's stay alive and poorly equipped hospitals and clinics die.

We have been given land by the people of Campo for the purpose of building a small hospital of about 24,000 square feet , plus an option on land to build a facility for the patients’ families to stay. It would not be right to take their land and build a small building that will die in a few years. Our vision is to have a facility that is open 24/7 to all people who come. Also for it to be a full-blown training facility to train many vocations beyond just the midwives.

A survey of different groups that send out doctors and medical teams has shown they will send out their teams to remote facilities where they can practice their profession.  Most of these teams are surgeons and specialists.  Of necessity they must have a place that is the equipped to do their work.  They also must have living quarters.

We plan to initially raise $300,000 to build this building complete with diagnostic equipment.  Provide a van for transportation, then invite medical teams from all over the world to come here and help these people. Remember the Field of dreams?  If we build it, they will come.