Recipe for a COTA Team

Children of the Americas has been taking medical/surgical teams to Guatemala since the late 1980's. This may make us the longest-term organization that has consistently traveled to Central America for the purpose of delivering medical care to the citizens of Guatemala who have little or no access to these services. We have donated surgery for many hundreds of patients, seen thousands more in our clinics, and five years ago, we added dentists to our teams. Our pharmacy dispenses over 5,000 prescriptons on each team and the orthotics volunteers quietly and competently support our services with their work to benefit our patients. 
What does it take to create the miracle of donated medical care for the poor of Guatemala? 
There aren't enough words to tell the story. It would need to be a book instead of a blog. There are too many hours to write about, too many details to post, too many daily challenges to explain. Perhaps our story is best told with pictures. As they say, a photo is worth 1,000 words.

Some would think that forming a new COTA team starts mid-summer, six months before departure, when we start gathering supplies in our respective garages and basements.

Child with tumor who was brought to U.S for donated surgery in collaboration with Word Pediatric Project

Same lucky toddler, post-op, playing before departure home to Guatemala

Mary Knoll Nun, Jude

Few know that the next team starts within a few weeks of landing the team members back on American soil in late January. Children who couldn't make our surgery schedule in Guatemala, due to complexity of care, are networked into partner organizations or hospitals that will donate surgical intervention. All OR charts are flown home with us, organized and the information is compiled to share with the COTA board. Many emails go back and forth about the welfare of our surgical cases. Pediatric cases start arriving in KY for donated care that was too complex to fix on a team. Many, many hours and piles of paperwork later, the half-dozen cases from the previous team are safely operated on and back home to their parents in Guatemala. Which means we are then ready for new team referrals from our wonderful friends in Guatemala, like Jude (above,left). 
And then things get busy. We pack supplies: 

 

We fund raise:

Roger and Rosemary, presenting COTA to Lexington Church

 We travel to Ohio and Louisville, to glean supplies for the team.

Thank you to Matthew:25 !

Surgical, dental and clinical supplies arrive in Guatemala

After arriving in Guatemala, we unload all of our previously packed supplies and dispurse them throughout the clinical areas of the hospitals we are working in. Each item has to be taken to the respective parts of the hospital where the COTA volunteers will be working. Our dentists (below) need their

Our dental team is flexible enough to set up anywhere we can find space for them!

In the OR in Guatemala

These little feet needed help

instruments. The surgeons require the tools of the trade required to perform 120-130 surgeries the week we are in Guatemala. Our clinic doctors use the fewest supplies but see the most patients. The orthotics and prosthetics team has endless patience for fitting little feet, adjusting crutches and supplying vital devices to enable our pediatric patients to walk. 
It takes countless hours, endless emails, limitless energy. But pulling together a COTA team is worth the work for her:

 And for him:

And them:

 

No Ball? No Problem.

When little David came to our 2012 Children of The Americas team, he wasn't a typical happy preschooler. David had been born without adequate limbs, which in Guatemala, meant he was destined to live a life of immobility. There are very few resources in this Central American country for children with such extreme disabilities.
David's mother had heard of COTA, and she brought him to Zacapa to seek assistance from our volunteer orthotics and prosthetics team members. Shelley Ryan (Lexington, KY), Tim Macke (Denver, CO) and Jason Griffin (Lakewood, CO) worked diligently to fit and fabricate prosthetic legs for David. With the help of ROMP's lab in Zacapa, two new little prosthetic legs were donated to David.
This video shows David and Tim testing David's new legs in the Guatemalan hospital courtyard.
 No ball? No problem!