If you do eye care, we need your help!

Right now IHS (International Health Services) is in dire need of eye
specialists to go on a 2 week medical mission trip to Honduras. We are also
looking for several doctors, nurses, one more surgeon, plus other medical
professions and helpers. It is a large undertaking with about 10 teams planned
for the 16 Feb to 4 March, 2007 trip. We hope to have 7 or 8 medical and dental
clinics plus about 2 or 3 eye care teams (glasses, etc.) Hopefully 2 surgical
teams can go, too. This means about 100 people will go counting all the support
and worker people who go to assist (many spouses and friends go in this way).
We have done this for 25 years so we have all the logistics planned. This
includes a container shipment to send eye team plus medical clinic & surgical
team supplies. We also send pharmacy and personal items.

How many teams of each type we will have totally depends on how many people
sign up and what their profession is. We do the sign ups early so that a small
group can go to Honduras the end of October and line up the team locations based
on who has signed up. We have had a fairly good turn out so far for some clinic
workers. However, I only know of one eye specialist signed up and only a few
doctors and nurses. Our purpose is to go to the poor remote locations of
Honduras where there are no eye care, medical, or dental services for the local
people. It would be a sad thing if a team did not go to a very needy area
simply because we lacked one person to complete a team.

Each eye team will have at least one eye specialist plus one or two helpers to
assist in fitting glasses. It would also have an interpreter and a radio
operator if needed. Usually about 4 or 5 will be on such a team. IHS has some
eye testing instruments plus we have several sources for eye glasses and other
needed supplies which IHS will supply. What we need most is your expertise to
add to the skills of the team. We already have several support people signed up
and ready to go. Our predominant work is doing quality eye testing and
prescribing/fitting eye glasses.

Each team is well rounded and this also helps when a spouse or friend wants to
be on the same team (note our application has a place to note your desire to be
on a team with some one else). A parent can take a MATURE son or daughter also
if they are able to be a productive member of the team.

This is very urgent because we need to know quite soon who is able to go.
Near the end of October, a small planning team will take the list of names (&
skills) of those going and they will actually travel to Honduras and assign the
actual sites based on that list. They will also work with the Honduran
government (& Salud) to plan the best places. Unlike many organizations who go
and do this work, we do not just “show up” we actually plan with the Hondurans
on where best to go. So, if this is even a possibility for you, please start
with a call to me or one of our Directors so we can help you to get information.

There are several other IHS Directors to cover all the professions who g.
They can help to answer more technical questions about the work of the eye team
or anything of that nature. So let me know if you have questions in that
regard. Note that we do have a tiny web site with GENERAL info:
www.IHSOFMN.org It does not go into much detail on the eye care work we do but
it does give some good basic info. One good place to look on the site is the
Newsbreak newsletters.

Call me any time or write back. A call is best so I can fill you in on basic
information and the variety of work conditions we encounter. Phone 320-634-4386

I and the needy of Honduras thank you for your interest in this very rewarding
work!

Best regards,

John Kirckof
JMKKEK@...
Phone: 320-634-4386
IHS Board of Directors

PS- Our most dire need is for Spanish translators. If you can help us find
one or two, I will buy you a Grape Uba when we get to LaCeiba ! Karen and I
signed up to go and are looking forward to meeting all the new folks going this
time!!



---------------------------------
Want to be your own boss? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]