What Is Medical Outreach?
During the last five years, Dr. Jensen has had the privilege to join this non-profit corporation along with other medical and professional volunteers, to provide much-needed medical aid to needy children, individuals, and families located in Central America.
“It’s always an honor to participate,” Dr. Jensen said of the mission. “I always return with amazing stories and life-changing experiences.”
Who Do They Help?
Dr. Jensen has had the opportunity to make a difference for many people in Guatemala. Here are a few of the recent stories.
One of the patients that made a big impression on Dr. Jensen was a woman with a badly burned hand. Scar tissue from the burn had fused her pinky to the rest of her hand, not only limiting her dexterity but causing her a lot of pain and discomfort. Dr. Jensen was able to surgically separate the finger and amputate the nonfunctional finger. As you can imagine, she was so happy to have relief from the pain and to have full use of her hand again. You can see from the photos that Dr. Jensen was very happy too!
In a similar case, Dr. Jensen met a boy who had badly burned hands. Like the woman above, as his burns healed, scar tissue formed, fusing his fingers to his palms. He, too, experienced severely limited dexterity, negatively impacting his ability to work and help provide for the family. On this trip, Dr. Jensen was able to separate the fingers from the palm and use a skin graft to repair one of the boy’s hands, making that hand functional again! Dr. Jensen is looking forward to repairing the boy’s other hand next year.
One of the biggest surgical needs in the area is hernia surgery. Dr. Jensen met a woman who seemed quite hopeless. She had a very bad abdominal hernia. It was so bad that the doctors in Guatemala had refused to even try to repair it, saying she could not be helped. Fortunately, Dr. Jensen was able to help this woman and repaired her hernia! The surgery was a total success! She was so thrilled and grateful to Dr. Jensen and could not thank him enough. He not only repaired her abdomen, he restored her hope.
How Can You Help?
“We owe a lot of credit for our success to the fact that we had ample medical supplies which we were able to acquire through generous donations,” Dr. Jensen explained. “One of the most useful supplies is surgical mesh which we often use to provide long-term relief for hernias.”
Without monetary donations from people like you, such humanitarian missions wouldn’t be possible. Dr. Jensen would like to invite you to consider donating to this worthy cause by visiting the utahmedicaloutreach.org.
