70 Volunteers for Santo Domingo Mission

IMAHelps is expecting at least 70 volunteers to join our July 25 to August 4 medical humanitarian mission to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.

“As always, our mission team will include mix of first-time medical mission volunteers as well as surgeons and other healthcare professionals who have been volunteering with us for many years across Central and South America,” said IMAHelps President and CEO Dr. Cristóbal Barrios, Jr.

Unlike previous IMAHelps missions, which typically took place at one hospital, our Dominican hosts have asked us to conduct our upcoming mission to Santo Domingo at three hospitals that are right next door to each other. These include:

— Hospital Traumatológico Dr. Ney Arias Lora

— Hospital Pediatrico Dr. Hugo Mendoza

— Hospital General y de Especialidades Dr. Mario Tolentino Dipp

The Dominican government also had very specific requests that they asked the IMAHelps team to address on our next mission. “They asked that we not bring our OBGYN or dental teams on this mission, but they requested that we bring skin burn specialists as they have a very high incidence of skin burns from cooking accidents and other types of accidents in the Dominican Republic,” Dr. Barrios said.

Dr. Barrios arranged for a 12-member skin burn surgery team from UC Irvine Medical Center to provide surgery assistance and training during an IMAHelps mission to Hospital Traumatológico Dr. Ney Arias Lora, which took place April 29 to May 4.

The first two IMAHelps missions to Santo Domingo have been arranged with assistance from Dr. Jodie Roure,
a friend of Dr. Barrios who has local contacts and many years of experience organizing medical missions in the Dominican Republic. Dr. Roure, J.D., Ph.D, is a civil rights attorney and Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York. Dr. Roure has conducted extensive research in the area of human rights, including violence against women in Brazil, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and the United States.

Dr. Roure’s longtime friend, Roxanna Reyes, is a deputy attorney general of the Dominican Republic who has also helped IMAHelps make critical contacts with government and hospital officials to facilitate our missions to Santo Domingo. “We’re grateful to have their assistance as we prepare for our summer mission,” Dr. Barrios said.

The IMAHelps summer mission will include general, orthopedic and plastic surgeons, our surgical support teams, as well as our triage, internal medicine, physical therapy and psychology teams, plus an 18-member robotics team from the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio, who will provide mechanical arms and hands for child amputees as well as a few adults that our Dominican partners have already identified as potential patients.