Group envisions larger mission

By Harold Gwin

Medical assistance is needed in the poverty-stricken area, the mission leader said.

YOUNGSTOWN — Local organizers of a medical mission to Mexico this summer say they want to serve as a clearinghouse for similar trips by others.

The group also plans to go back to Mexico and expand efforts to Africa.

Dr. Pamela McHugh Schuster, professor of nursing at Youngstown State University, led the one-week mission to San Quintin, Mexico, last month.

A total of 23 people made the trip, including YSU nursing students and faculty and area medical personnel. Each paid $800 to participate in setting up a medical clinic in the poverty-stricken area.

“The need is so tremendous,” Schuster said, adding that the plan now is to train and coordinate additional teams to make the same effort.

It would be a combined effort by YSU and area nurses and doctors, she said, noting that the group is working with YSU’s international studies department on the coordination/training idea.

The goal would be to expand participation beyond nursing students to include Spanish students, dietary students, dental hygienist students and others, she said.

“We have tremendous resources and tremendous interest in our town,” Schuster said, adding that it will take a big effort to make a significant difference.

“It’s going to take an army to make an impact,” she said.

The plans are to return to San Quintin in both March and September 2009 and expand the effort to Tanzania, Africa, in 2010, Schuster said.

As the group did in Mexico, it would set up an outpatient medical clinic in Tanzania for other medical missions to use, she said.

“We saw over 300 patients,” Schuster said of the Mexico trip.

The group was also able to establish a connection with a local hospital there and left about $500 behind with a local church to handle referrals for additional medical services for those seen at the clinic, she said.

The clinic provided eye and dental exams and medical screenings and ran both a pharmacy and an outpatient service treating injuries and ailments.

It’s a migrant working area, Schuster said, explaining that most of the patients were women and children. The men were out working in the fields for 10 hours a day, six days a week, for a $90-a-week paycheck, she said.

Hypertension and diabetes are very common there, even in young people. It is treatable if the people have medicine, she said, adding that the life expectancy in San Quintin is only 30 years.

Participants in the mission were: YSU nursing students Amanda Grenga, Anna Bacisin, Rebecca Basista, Traci Brkich, Christine Hulvalchick, Robert Mayle and Bianca Catrucco; Nursing faculty Schuster, Donna Bricker, Dorcas Fitzgerald and Nancy Wagner; physicians Nazim Jaffer, Mounir El Hayek, Consuelo Mendez and William Reeves; pharmacists Richard Ferenchak and Jerome Geier; orthodontist Sheldon Persky; the Rev. Ralph Edwards of North Lima Good Hope Lutheran Church; nurse practitioner Joanna Farragher; photographer Tazim Jaffer; and drivers Fred Schuster and George Farragher.