Mending Kids deploys 21 person medical mission team to Guatemala and completes successful week-long ENT mission

Mending Kids continues its partnership with The Shalom Foundation’s Moore Pediatric Surgery Center (MPSC) in Guatemala City to provide 85 children with general ears, nose and throat procedures. 

Mending Kids Lead surgeon Dr. Namrata Varma (Otolaryngologist) and her team of medical volunteers, including Dr. Joni Doherty from Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital, deployed to Guatemala for our annual ENT mission at Moore Medical Center. Our mission team was made up of 21 volunteers, including 10 student volunteers from MUSE High School in Calabasas. In total 93 patients were screened and 85 patients received procedures.

Mending Kids’ hope is to make great strides at self-sustainment in the area of pediatric ENT surgery while making many more of these surgeries available to these young patient and empowering surgeons to provide these procedures confidently. Sharing health care knowledge and skills is a crucial building block toward establishing surgical sustainability in Guatemala and to mending more children beyond the scope of just our mission.

Our MUSE High-School student volunteers helped out with paperwork, passed out stuffed animals to patients, helped ease the children's nerves before and after surgery,  painted the exterior and bathroom of Prince of Peace Girls Group Home and Orphanage, and helped pack our loaned medical equipment. They also had the opportunity to connect with local Guatemalan peers, who helped with translating  in the screening clinic, pre-op, and post-op rooms.

Mending Kids thanks KARL STORZ, a global manufacturer and distributor of medical instruments and devices, for generously donating surgical equipment to be used for the procedures.