During his first medical mission trip to Haiti in December 2000, pediatric neurologist Chris Miller, M.D., contracted an infectious disease – the volunteer bug. Since then, Dr. Miller has returned to Haiti several times.

“Once you go the first time and see and understand the problems,” he said, “you want to go back with a plan to fix them.”

The province of Boucan-Carre, Haiti, undoubtedly has its problems. Located in the center of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the health of its people is equally destitute. However, Dr. Miller and the others who have been to Haiti with him (including Nancy Timm, R.N., and Karen Herbstritt, R.N., from Children's Hospital) have made tremendous progress toward meeting the medical needs of this region. On the first trip, they set up a clinic in a portion of the local school. They were inundated with people – some who walked more than 20 miles – because it was the only opportunity they would have to receive health care until the next medical mission trip. So during Dr. Miller’s second stay in October 2001, the group established a self-sustaining clinic staffed by two full-time Haitian physicians, and now their trips are meant more to supplement the clinic. They are also in the process of purchasing a building that can serve as a hospital.

“I see a direct impact each time we go back,” Dr. Miller said. “I see children who are healthier and improved sanitation and hygiene overall.”

Traveling to an underdeveloped country evokes a new appreciation for conveniences and possessions often taken for granted back home, Dr. Miller said. He also said his experiences in Haiti have caused him to form a new level of respect for his colleagues at Children's Hospital who participate in medical missions trips.

“We are especially blessed to have an institution like this with people who give of themselves to children every day and then also help others on their own time,” he said. “The care they show in taking medical missions trips is the same care they manifest every day at Children's Hospital.”

The work Dr. Childs’ group does is extremely important to the Aukan tribe. There are an unusually high number of people with cataracts among these descendants of former slaves, and they do not have access to any eye care.

“Eye care is especially critical,” Dr. Childs said. “Improving vision can make a lasting difference in people’s lives.”

On their last trip, the group made a difference in the lives of about 350 people by prescribing and providing eyeglasses for them. They also performed about 40 cataract surgeries in a tiny, screened operating room cooled by a window fan using state-of-the-art equipment powered by a generator.

“We were in one of the most primitive regions doing one of the most advanced surgeries,” Dr. Childs said.

Although the trips he organizes help hundreds of people to see better, Dr. Childs says his eyes are the ones that have been opened by doing so.

“My perspective of the world is different now,” he said. “These trips truly help me see what is eternally important and what is not.”

"Ordinary people can be used to do extraordinary things.”

Steve Vail, Children’s Hospital’s Webmaster, speaks from experience. Steve has been on three medical missions trips with his cousin, who is a family practice physician in West Virginia and a member of the medical advisory board for Servant’s Heart, a U.S.-based relief and missionary organization that conducts full-time operations in the Blue Nile region of South Sudan, Africa. He has seen firsthand the difference a few people can make in the lives of thousands.

On his third trip in January 2002, Steve was part of a short-term medical missions team that included a doctor, two nurses and another assistant to manage the pharmacy. Steve and the other members of the medical missions team traveled to an area in the Eastern Upper Nile region of Sudan—only accessible from the air—where people trying to escape the oppressive government of Sudan have gathered and are unseen by the rest of the world. Two million people have died in Sudan as a result of the 20-year civil war between the Arab-Islamic government and the Christian and Animist inhabitants in the southern half of Africa’s largest country.

“We went to ease their suffering from a complete lack of medical treatment and to let them know that they were not forgotten by the rest of the world,” Steve said.

Being the first group of westerners to provide emergency relief aid in this region since 1964, the team brought more than $100,000 worth of medicines and treated more than 1,500 patients in 10 days. Many of the people they saw had walked for days to get there. Steve’s job was to package, explain and distribute medications from the pharmacy.

“It was quite a challenge,” he said. “Sometimes I had to use two translators – one for English to Arabic, another for Arabic to tribal.”

Steve also had to contend with 110-degree weather and the fear of being bombed by the Sudanese government, but he never questioned his purpose in being there.

“I feel very humbled by the experience.”