MEDICAL MISSIONS: “Our efforts can change their situation. I absolutely love doing this.”  – Sue Perez, RN

ROCKLEDGE ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON Lawrence Robinson, MD operates on a girl’s knee as a volunteer with Operation Rainbow, assisted by Ben Morin, MD and Ruth Binkley, LPN. Tendons in the girl’s knee did not grow properly and she had been unable to walk normally, instead getting around by “walking” on her knees until this life-changing surgery as a pre-teen in Ecuador.

WHEN RUTH BINKLEY's son was born 43 years ago with club feet she knew the answer was immediate treatment.

DURING AN OPERATION RAINBOW mission to Ecuador volunteer surgical technician Ruth Binkley, LPN comforts a patient born with hip dysplasia while volunteer anesthesiologist Greg Pate, MD monitors her condition following surgery to correct the problem.

“If I had not lived in the United States he would not have grown up to walk,” recalls Binkley, a long time nurse and surgical technician at Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach, Florida.

“At four days old he was in casts and then had surgery at age two. He walks fine, played football and baseball, and now he’s an 18-wheel truck driver.”

She never forgot that gift. So eight years ago when she was asked to volunteer with orthopedic surgeries on a medical mission trip to El Salvador, she said yes immediately.

“All the time I think about my son,” says Binkley. “Sometimes the parents speak very little English and someone will bring in a child with club feet and I tell them my bambino had club feet and he’s been corrected. You can communicate with them by just showing on your face that you’re happy to be there.”

Helping More Than 10,000 Children Worldwide

Binkley is a volunteer with Operation Rainbow, a non-profit organization that provides free orthopedic and plastic surgery to children who don’t have access to care in developing countries. It was started in 1978 by Houston plastic surgeon William B. Riley, Jr., MD, FACS after a visit to a rural hospital in the Philippines where he met 300 children hoping to have facial deformities corrected. As a volunteer surgeon he could operate on only 15.

MERRITT ISLAND SURGICAL and orthopedic nurse Sue Perez, RN blows bubbles to cheer up a patient during a mission trip. Perez organizes Brevard County’s volunteer team members who make at least one trip for Operation Rainbow each year.

Dr. Riley vowed to recruit several colleagues and return the next year. Operation Rainbow has now grown to average six orthopedic and three plastic surgery team missions each year, helping more than 10,000 children around the world.

In 2000, Orthopedic surgeon Richard Gosselin, MD, MPH, MSC, FRCS(C), FAAOS decided to put all those impressive credentials to use with Operation Rainbow and numerous other humanitarian medical causes following a seven-year career with Space Coast Orthopaedic Center on Merritt Island.

“Private practice was just a means to get to a certain financial security that I could actually do what I like doing, which is what I’m doing now,” explains Dr. Gosselin, who first “caught the bug” for his volunteer work while a medical student visiting Africa. Since leaving private practice, he earned a master’s degree in public health and now teaches that subject and orthopedic surgery at two universities near his home in San Francisco. He travels six to eight months a year, with teaching also a huge part of those trips.

“It’s like the old proverb, teach someone to fish and he can feed himself for life,” says Dr. Gosselin, who makes sure each humanitarian trip includes surgery and also a learning opportunity for the doctors, nurses and therapists who live and work in each country. “The multiplier effect is really at the level of the care providers. We try to do teaching that is appropriate for their environment and the means they have.”

Sue Perez Organizes the Space Coast

Operation Rainbow teams set up shop in a local hospital in countries such as Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru, holding clinics the first day to choose patients and then spending the rest of the week performing at least 50 surgeries and sometimes up to 100.

OPERATION RAINBOW volunteers also use each trip as a teaching opportunity, instructing nurses and physicians at the host city hospital about new techniques. The Internet also allows the visiting medical team to consult about a patient’s follow-up care and rehabilitation even after a mission has ended.

“What’s heartbreaking is when we go and hold clinic and there’s hundreds of kids and not being able to help everyone. A lot come from miles away and they walk or ride in the back of a wagon — however they can get there,” says Sue Perez, RN, a nurse at Merritt Island (Florida) Surgery Center, who serves as the local coordinator for volunteers from the Space Coast. She joined the Operation Rainbow team after a phone call from her former colleague, Dr. Gosselin.

“It’s such a rewarding thing for me,” says Perez. “What I give to the kids there is nothing compared to what they give me.”

She recruits Brevard County nurses, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and physical therapists for the missions, mostly through word of mouth, with many using vacation time to go along. The local team is fleshed out with volunteer medical professionals from around the country and even surgeons from Canada and Italy. Everyone is a volunteer, even the organization’s executive director Laura Escobosa, who’s based in Oakland, Calf.

“It’s a wonderful experience for the people receiving our services, but it’s also an enriching experience for the professionals who volunteer. It opens their eyes to how lucky we are,” says Escobosa, who first got involved almost 20 years ago as a translator.

She helps with the monumental logistics involved in each trip, including orchestrating the shipment of surgical supplies to the local hospitals; equipment that she agrees cannot be too high tech.

VOLUNTEER post-surgery nurse Susanne Delagnes, RN comforts a young girl following an orthopedic operation.

“It doesn’t do anything to teach them that you can do this surgery with a laser if they don’t have that when we leave,” explains Escobosa. “Dr. Gosselin understands that issue in his teaching. Everybody jokes, give him a fork and knife and he can operate.”

The national organization picks up travel costs for nursing volunteers, with most physicians paying their own way. Sue Perez has been successful at raising money locally to help with costs that Operation Rainbow cannot cover, speaking to anyone and any group that might be willing to donate.

“When you go to a developing country and you have a child who can’t walk and they’re just kind of left to survive or be seen as a burden to their family, that makes an impression,” says Perez. “Our efforts can change their situation. I absolutely love doing this.”

HOW YOU CAN HELP

• For more information regarding Operation Rainbow log on to OperationRainbow.org
• Local volunteer and donation contact: Sue Perez, RN by calling 321-537-1523

Related posts:

1. Afghanistan: A Medical Journey of Hope
2. Bringing Hope to the Hopeless
3. HOSPICE CARE: Love, Hope, Understanding and Courage