Much has been going on this year in vision care at the Manos Amigas Clinic: new equipment, continued partnerships, and new partnerships all are contributing to better vision care for people in Honduras struggling with their eyesight.

What a year it has been! We looked back over the many miracles of the past 20 years of serving in Honduras and we began looking forward to the next phase of our medical campus. In September of this year, the Manos Amigas clinic had its 250,000th patient visit.

From providing basic medical care in a two-room borrowed building with a staff of five to a 13,600 square foot facility providing medical, dental, and optometry care with a staff of 25, the past 20 years have been nothing short of a miracle.

The need for vision care is immense. In Honduras, a country of more than 9 million people, there are only 103 ophthalmologists and most of them are in large cities. Recognizing that the community has a great need, we only had to look as far as our philosophy statement—Aid. Inform. Empower.—to know what the next step should be. Serving at the Crossroads established a scholarship for a medical school student to continue his/her studies to become an ophthalmologist. We would like you to meet such a student — Marlon Gilberto Tabora Jimenez.

This was an exciting year with the return of brigades to Manos Amigas after 2-1/2 years of not being able to safely send volunteers. Our brigades work closely with the Manos Amigas staff, strengthening the partnership between Serving at the Crossroads and the Manos Amigas Clinic. We also significantly upgraded our blood analysis capability and hired a director for the lab.

The clinic dental staff and their computer technician worked virtually with Shick Serona Dentsply to program the new computers for the upgraded x-ray system.

On April 19, Meaghan Frisbee and Nikki Fedoravicius from Vision Health International (VHI) arrived at the Manos Amigas clinic to deliver a biometer or Inter Ocular Lens (IOL) machine the VHI had organization donated. 

April 7th marks World Health Day, a global health awareness event sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO). The World Health Day theme for 2021 is Building a fairer, healthier world. Learn how Serving at the Crossroads and the Manos Amigas clinic are supporting WHO’s goals.

Today, we honor the three physicians who work every day at the Manos Amigas clinic as well as the many physicians who have volunteered on brigades. Meet our heroes!

Today is National Dentist’s Day when we show appreciation and thanks for our dentists. Thank you to the gifted and talented dentists at the Manos Amigas clinic. And, thank you to the retired dentists on our board of directors and those dentists who have volunteered on brigades.

For nine years, Jose suffered from an agonizing disease causing painful, oozing wounds on his leg. He suffered year...after year…after year…each year filled with agony as the mysterious disease progressed. With limited medical care available in Honduras, Jose’s disease went undiagnosed.

My name is Amber Raibley and for the past 9 years I have been working as an acute care surgery and trauma nurse practitioner for Evansville Surgical Associates in Evansville, Indiana.  I had the privilege to travel with the first vascular surgical brigade to serve at Manos Amigas Clinic in January 2020.  This week spent among the three operating rooms at Manos Amigas was unlike any other week of operating I have ever experienced.   

Kudos to one of the clinic’s longest tenured employees—Karen Murillo Casaca—for 15 years of faithful service.

Manos Amigas has no coronavirus test kits, nor do other private or public clinics. Only the National Institute of Virology in Tegucigalpa is doing the tests. As of April 18, Honduras had conducted 2,535 tests, which is 256 tests per one million people, compared with 11,492 tests per one million people in the United States.

COVID-19 has hit developing countries like Honduras particularly hard. Many Hondurans live off of only what they can sell each day in a roadside stand. For those that have a steady job, most have been laid off and those who are still working are receiving only half-pay.

Serving at the Crossroads Founder Bob Sumner and his wife Pauline along with Dr. George Trajtenberg and his wife Adrianna were featured in the 2016 Chester County Foundation Donor Report for their work with Serving at the Crossroads and the Manos Amigas Clinic.

This is the real life story of Fernanda, a two-year old from Honduras with bilateral retinoblastoma, an eye condition caused by a malignant tumor. The story is so compelling that it just seems like it had to be a fairytale or an answer to a prayer...or maybe both?

Carrying a burlap sack on one arm while walking past our clinic, with eyes cast downward searching for scraps of anything of value on the littered dirt street, Guiellermo suddenly looked heavenward, finding himself in front of our clinic sign that read Manos Amigas.

The team from West Chester hiked to the top of the mountain where they found numerous clusters of small, low-profile dwellings.