A mission to spread care beyond borders

Chandler resident Sandra Ramos has worked for more than 17 years as a community and maternity nurse.

On Nov. 8, she’ll take on a new challenge: bringing community health care services to rural residents in Esquipulas, Guatemala, where there’s virtually no health care available.

“They don’t take health care for granted,” she said. “To them, it’s a gift. And here in the states, we take it for granted, more of a right.”

She’ll be among 20 Catholic Healthcare West employees going on an inaugural mission to bring a wide range of desperately needed community health care and supplies to the Central American village.

“It’s just something I wanted to do for many years — to just get out there and help the people where they’re at,” said Ramos, a manager for community education at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center and Chandler Regional Hospital.

While in Central America, the Catholic Healthcare team of nurses, doctors and administrators will provide primary care medicine to rural villages and deliver medication and supplies.

The team also will teach residents preventive care. Members of the team, which include East Valley Dr. Walter Jy-Dong Lin and administrator Peggy Styer, donate vacation time to take part. Catholic Healthcare West donates matching vacation time.

It’s just the first of many trips that the area hospitals plan to help needy international communities.

According to Catholic Healthcare West, more than half of the world’s population lives below the internationally defined poverty line of less than $2 a day in income.

The hospitals launched the International Healthcare Ministry in January 2006 to help improve the quality of life in some of those areas.

“We have always recognized our responsibility to serve those who are poor or disadvantaged,” said Lloyd H. Dean, president and chief executive officer of Catholic Healthcare West, in a news release. The mission to Guatemala is in collaboration with the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, which operates residential centers for poor women, the elderly and disabled children in Esquipulas, and the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, which has rendered aid to the area for 40 years.

The hospital also is partnering with Pennsylvania-based Global Health Ministry, which has sent volunteers on medical missions to Latin America since 1989.

The volunteers will return Nov. 17.