As an organization rich in faith, we refer to those who travel with us as missioners. Today in our blog, we share a few reflections from our team in the midst of their mission experience.

In the clinic at Punata, adult cardiologist, Dr. Mark Ottolin, and pediatrician, Dr. Monica Joseph, worked together to assess a young boy with a congenital heart defect. 

Our multi-specialty mission team is working at the municipal hospital of Punata this week. Punata is a small city encircled by the Andes mountains, but thanks to the publicity efforts of the Puente de Solidaridad staff, patients from all over the region are travelling to our location to take advantage of our missioner’s expertise.

Today marks the start of back-to-back mission trips for Solidarity Bridge. Our multi-specialty mission team has just arrived in Punata, Bolivia, and next week, a general surgery mission team will be working in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

Learn about the fruits of our most recent neurosurgery mission trip, which included a two-day course on Pediatric Neurosurgery. It is our hope that Solidarity Bridge’s Program for the Development of Neurosurgery continues to turn the earth like a plow, opening furrows for the enhancement of neurosurgery, and a commitment among all in medicine to use these advanced skills to serve those in great need.

On mission in Santa Cruz, Solidarity Bridge and our local partner, Puente de Solidaridad, will offer a training in pediatric neurosurgery. By training neurosurgeons in this complex area, more Bolivian children with cancer or tumors will have hope for a better chance in life.

Each of us at Solidarity Bridge is called to dream and believe that what has been done to date does not limit what is doable in time... This happens when we, the communities of Solidarity Bridge and Puente de Solidaridad, strive to live the conviction that, as a human family, we are one - somos uno.

What better time to introduce new staff than Springtime! You’d never know by our fast moving medical programs, events, mailings and office operations that we’ve had staff transitions. But in the past 12 months we said goodbye to four Solidarity Bridge staff members who either retired, returned to graduate school or moved on to a larger job opportunity. Thank you, Juan Lorenzo and Sarah Hinojosa, Kira Foken, and Mara O'Brien for your loyal service and enormous contributions over many years.

“The course was excellent and demonstrated the importance of training opportunities in Bolivia. Many questions I had were clarified by the extremely capable faculty who led this course.”

The purpose of the mission is to provide training to Bolivian neurosurgeons and ENT surgeons in endoscopic skull base surgery. The course has attracted surgeons from all around Bolivia, and will include lectures and the commented operative simulcast of five surgeries. Of the five patients whose surgeries will be central to the course, four are working women in the prime of their lives who are losing their vision -- and their livelihoods -- to pituitary tumors. 

“My mother deserves to have good health,” one of her daughters commented. A son added, “She has suffered a lot over the years, but she is strong and independent. She knew the mission was the answer --- and she moved ahead.”