Spring Break with SIGHT

Overview

The purpose of the spring break trips is always sustainability. We realize that we do not help the communities that we visit by coming in for a week, handing out medications, and then leaving. Though the students gain hands on medical experience, our primary goal is to help the communities in ways that will last like teaching them about good health, diet and exercise, and hygiene. Also by introducing our students to longer-term opportunities, like volunteering for the summers or 4th year rotations, we hope to instill a life long passion for helping the global community.

• Roatan

  

  The first trip started by SIGHT was taking a group of students down to Roatan, Honduras to help an American Nurse fulfill her dream of providing basic medical care for the community of the island. From the apartment beneath her home - to donated space in the Son Rise Calvary Church in Sandy Bay - Peggy Stranges has given her life to building Clínica Esperanza, otherwise known as "Hospital Ms. Peggy."

  Open five days a week, the Clínica Esperanza serves over 150 patients a week for acute and chronic illnesses ranging from hypertension, diabetes, malaria, and a variety of breaks, scrapes and bruises.

  Together, with Honduran physician Raymond Cherington, M.D. and Arizona-based physician Patrick Connell, M.D., Ms. Peggy finally erected a freestanding building in 2007 - the first phase of a planned two building endeavor that will provide outpatient primary care, urgent care, inpatient treatment, pre-natal and dental services. During SIGHT’s first visit to Roatan, we helped to open the clinic, doing things from painting walls, setting up furniture, etc. Now we continue to volunteer with the clinic by setting up health fairs in various city centers, doing well child screenings in the elementary schools, and helping to see patients in the clinic.

• Santa Ana

  The trip to Santa Ana, Intibuca, Honduras is in partnership with Baylor College of Medicine. BCM established their relationship with the Santa Ana community in 2001 and has returned biannually ever since. In the spirit of collaboration to serve the underserved, they invited SIGHT UT-H to create a clinic trip with a team of students and doctors during spring break. Our students take part in clinical preceptorships in Baylor's clinic and participate in community and public health activities, such as water sanitation, health education, agriculture projects, home visits, etc. They also perform well-child and adult screening exams.

  Students fly into the capital and make the long journey through the mountains and rain forests to the quiet community of Santa Ana. Spring Break 2009 was UT-Houston’s first trip to the Santa Ana community. SIGHT's trips parallel the clinic's continued growth of health resources for Santa Ana and surrounding communities.