Venezuela 2016

CHOP Dream Team Rotoplast trip to Cumana, Venezuela  September 18-19

Rotoplast is a cleft lip and palate service organization formed by Rotarians.  They have a long history of association between a former CHOP plastic surgeon and Cumana, Venezuela.  Our medical director, Dr. David Low has been here four times before and organized this team made up of Rotarians from the Philadelphia area and a medical team primarily based at or affiliated with CHOP.

Half of the team traveled via San Francisco in order to pick up 42 boxes of medical supplies from the Rotoplast headquarters.  Most of the rest of us traveled from Philadelphia.  We met up in Houston where we had a six hour red-eye flight arriving in Caracas at 6 am.  All of the people and bags made it uneventfully except for my bag!  It has some of my medical supplies and a few personal things.  Hopefully it will get here in a day or two.  Fortunately I carried most of my clothes and essential things in my carry on.

The local Rotarians arranged to have us transported to Cumana via a military transport plane.  Unfortunately, there was a long delay until the plane was available, so we waited around in the airport for close to 8 hours.

When we finally arrived at Cumana, the local Rotarians met us and had a little music playing and some speeches.  In years past they had music and dancing and lunch, but we were too late this year for that.  We went to our local hotel, had a team meeting and dinner and headed to bed.

We have 3 surgeons, 4 anesthesiologists, 2 pediatricians, an orthodontist, a speech therapist, 5 nurses and other support team members. 

September 20

Today was our intake clinic.  It was a little slow getting started, but there were about 225 patients, 165 evaluated for surgery, about 100 scheduled for surgery.  Part of the team went to the OR to unpack boxes and get set up for the OR for tomorrow.  We had dinner/snacks and time for bed!