Throughout the year, our Bolivian partner surgeons perform gallbladder and hernia surgeries, procedures in high demand among impoverished patients who are identified through our offices in Bolivia. Our mission teams deliver vital equipment and supplies and provide ongoing training to advance skills in these and other high-complexity procedures such as megacolon and various oncological surgeries. Mission trips seek to expand surgical capacities at the most important third-level public hospitals in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.
Amid our long-term goals and strategies, the day-to-day work of Solidarity Bridge always comes back to serving the needs of the patient in front of us. Each brings a unique story, and it is a gift to be invited to be a part of it. For both our patients and ourselves, these encounters can be fraught with heartache, but are also a source of great joy
The women we care for are themselves caregivers—they are mothers, they are daughters, they have jobs that put food on the table. Until this trip, I never fully understood the profound difference that access to minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery can make in allowing a patient to pursue treatment.
Resuming our in-person partnership with the Oncological Institute of Eastern Bolivia this month, our main goal was to provide specialized training and fill essential surgical equipment and supply needs. But we also traveled to the Cancer Institute to share the burden, albeit for just one week, of the ups and downs of cancer care.
Bolivian-led mobile surgery campaigns served more than 50 patients throughout the summer months.
This is Mission. Moving forward step by step, patient by patient. Celebrating lives restored, and doing what we can to maintain hope for a future for our patients and their families.
Learn More:
Read reports from General Surgery Mission Trips.
Read about our partner, Dr. Jhonny Camacho, a general surgeon in a large public hospital in Cochabamba.
Read about our patient, Gregoria, a pancreatic cancer survivor.
We typically host two General Surgery Mission Trips each year!
Learn how you can join the team.
Two American doctors on a surgery mission in Bolivia seek the true meaning of solidarity. Their emotional encounter with two patients challenges and heals both doctors and patients. See more videos.
Paulina is from the central Bolivian town of Mizque, but due to her ill health has reluctantly moved to Cochabamba to live with her son and his family. She suffers from Chagas disease, a parasitic infection endemic to her home region. Up to one-third of people infected with Chagas develop heart failure and/or digestive disorders. Paulina is especially unlucky – her heart is weakened, and she underwent surgery last year for Chagasic megacolon. Now her esophagus is direly impacted as well...