Servant Ministries Clinics Program

Servant Ministries began a medical clinic in April of 2004.  We saw the need to provide medical care at affordable prices to the people from the mountain villages.  There are local health departments that provide free medical attention, but for the most part they don’t have the medicine that is needed to treat the people.  Putting a name on their condition without providing the means to alleviate it is of little use.  People from the mountain villages are also apprehensive about going to the local health departments.  Situations have improved in recent years, but in the past there were real “caste issues” between seeing a patient from the town and seeing one from the mountain village, who are from more pure Mayan descent.  We try to treat each patient that comes to our clinic with the respect and love of God that they deserve! 

 

Servant Ministries hosts short term medical teams that come and do outreaches in the remote mountain villages, taking the clinics to the people for one day outreaches.  They leave behind their left over meds and this is what allows us to operate the on-going medical clinic for the ministry.  Our current schedule is to be open 3 days a week.  We have a nurse who operates the clinic and she deals with all of the chronic on-going health issues and we stock the necessary meds to help the people.  We are able to offer testing for glucose, breathing treatments and coordinate with a lab when lab tests are necessary. 

 

Also, Ana, our nurse, is a Christian and can many times offer encouragement, counsel and prayer to our patients and they leave having been treated for the “whole person”. 

 

The people pay a minimal fee (equivalent to 2 hours of work at minimum wage) for their consultation with the nurse.  This helps to pay for the nurse and receptionist’s wages.  Then the meds are given without cost.  We run a small store at the clinic as well, to help offset the costs of the clinic and to keep fees charged to a minimum.  

 

As of October of 2007, we began to offer dental service at the clinic as well.  We have a local dentist come every Saturday who does extractions, cleanings and fillings at cost.  We have seen a tremendous response to this outreach and have appointments made usually for up to 2 months in advance.  People have had chronic teeth problems, many times for years, and it is a real blessing to be able to give them a pain free mouth and to help teach them oral hygiene.

 

In December of 2009 we dedicated a new clinic building to house our medical/dental clinic.  It has much larger exam rooms for both medical and dental consultations plus 2 bathrooms, a very large reception/store area and nicer ambiance.  The surrounding security wall was brought up to full height.  Our next construction for the clinic will be to build a duo storage rooms to house our meds and store inventory plus an area to start our own lab. If you are interested in helping, please communicate with our US office by calling (810)385-4338 or writing an email to nancy@servantministries.net.  

Clinic Update

April 2011 marks our 7 year anniversary of when we started the ministry’s medical clinic.  Literally 1000s of people have been helped over those years.  We continue to strive to show God’s love to each person who comes looking for help and we reach out to their medical needs as well as encourage them in their spiritual walks.  Below is the newly posted table that shows the patient activity that was accomplished over the last year.

 

 

Milk Distribution

We continue to hand out milk to babies and toddlers who are in extreme need due to being under weight and undernourished.  We have been able to rescue many little ones and save them from a sure death, as they are nursed back to health and good weights.  We encourage our teams to bring powdered formula with them and we are always looking for people who would like to assist with a collection to provide this "powdered gold"!  It can make the difference of life and death for these babies that are tipping the balance on life and death and knowing that a little assistance can make all the difference is a great incentive to help them!

 

Below is our new table that reflects the number of patients that we have served over the last year and to date over our 5 years of operation.

 

  

 

PATIENT TALLY FROM APRIL 2010 - MARCH 2011
GENERAL VISITS	NUMBER OF PATIENTS	TOTAL VISITS
One time visit	1066	1066
Repeated second visit	38	76
Repeated third visit	10	30
Repeated fourth visit	7	28
Repeated fifth visit	1	5
Repeated sixth visit	1	6
EMBRACE VISITS
One time visit	71	71
Repeated second visit	30	60
Repeated third visit	13	39
Repeated fourth visit	5	20
Repeated fifth visit	5	25
Repeated sixth visit	2	12
Repeated seventh visit	2	14
Repeated eighth visit	0	0
Repeated ninth visit	9	81
Repeated tenth visit	1	10
Repeated eleventh visit	0	0
Repeated twelfth visit?	1	12
TOTALS	1262	1555
Visits from April 2004-April 2005	1,603	2,224
Visits from April 2005-April 2006	1,147	1,564
Visits from April 2006-April 2007	1,436	1,875
Visits from April 2007-April 2008	976	1,366
Visits from April 2008-April 2009	670	1,024
Visits from April 2009-April 2010	804	1,217
To Date:	7898	10825

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dental Update

 

As of June 2011 we have a new dentist that is working with our medical/dental clinic.  We had had 2 dentists that each came once a month on our Embrace days to cover the dental needs (cleanings, filling, extractions) but we were running about a 50% success rate of when they showed up.  Dr. Xiomara Diaz lives right in Camotan, just a few doors from the clinic.  She works at a dental clinic that the city runs (Monday through Friday) and also runs her own clinic in town but is offering to cover our Saturday Embrace meetings, which is currently twice a month.   She is able to put more hours in which will allow us to see more patients.  She wants to give talks to the families on oral health and seems very interested to try to help the children.  We are happy to have her come on board to help us meet these dental needs!

 

---

 

In January 2008 we expanded our dental services.  We had been offering extractions since November 2007.  We began doing fillings and cleanings!  The people are really responding to these outreaches.  Rachel, our new dentist, has been gracious enough to bring her own equipment that we are lacking to be able to offer these new services….until we are able to buy our own.  The people are really responding to these new services.  We are offering them at half or less than the normal on-going local prices, trying to basically just cover our costs.  We have appointments made for over 2 months in advance, filling about 2/3 of our appointments and leaving a few open for “walk ins”.   

 

Embrace is covering the dental benefits for the sponsored children and they are really taking advantage of it.  World Vision has also sent us some of their children to see.

 

Most of these people have never had dental care, especially outside of doing an extraction once a tooth gets to a point that there is no other alternative.   We are trying to do oral hygiene training and teach the people how to properly care for their teeth and to have regular checkups.  Every patient is receiving a free toothbrush.  What a blessing to be able to offer these services to the people. 

 

 

---

The following table shows the activity of our “Dental Services” that were provided in 2009.  Remember that the dentist is only working on Saturdays, so we believe that we have been able to reach a lot of people through this outreach at the ministry’s clinic.

 

DENTAL SERVICES RENDERED FROM JANUARY 2010 THRU DECEMBER 2010
NAME	TOTALS
# OF PATIENTS	234
EXTRACTIONS	114
CLEANINGS	96
FILLINGS	104

 

 

Lions’ for Sight
My southern fundraising trip in May opened a new door for the ministry’s clinic.  It was always our desire to one day offer optical service.  Few people in town and next to no one in the mountain villages wear glasses……and it isn’t because they all have perfect vision!  It is just because they cannot afford to do anything about it.  We have sold “readers” at our clinic store for a few years at a minimal price but haven’t been able to move beyond that.

The Lion’s Club has been known for years as a group that collects old discarded glasses.  Sometimes someone would bring us down a box.  But it was a matter of sitting someone down to try every pair to see if anything worked.  We have come across something that will work much better than that.  There is a local Lion’s Club in Graham, TX that has offered to buy the equipment that we will need to do the actual eye exams.  There is a factory/warehouse in Midland, TX that receives all of these used glasses.  They refurbish them, changing the lenses or frames as needed and have them marked with the calibration of the lenses.  They will send us an initial start up package of 3800 pairs of glasses, shipped to us in Guatemala.  This way we will have all of the potential options that people may need for a prescription strength that will work for them and a choice as to what fits best.  When we have used 300 pairs or so, we are to let them know what we have used and they will be replaced to maintain a good inventory of glasses.  The Lion’s Club will pay to have 1-2 people trained to know how to use this equipment and also pay for them to come to Guatemala, transporting the equipment, so that they can train some of our clinic workers to be able to do the eye exams.  The people coming to Guatemala are planned for January 2012 but the training took place in July and the shipping of the glasses will need to take place prior to their trip to Guatemala. 

Here are some important statistics that they received at the training:

40% of children (up to age 20) need some form of corrective eye glasses.
60% of adults between 20 and 40 could benefit from glasses.
100% (or nearly 100%) of adults over 40 need glasses (and this includes simple reading glasses)
80% of all people in developing countries have no access to eye care.
1 in 200 people under the age of 50 have glaucoma
1 in 10 people over 80 have glaucoma
Untreated glaucoma results in blindness in 100% of cases, and the disease has no symptoms that the patient can discern until they wake up one day blind.

 

We are excited about this new service that we can offer through the ministry’s clinic and will evaluate whether it will require further construction to give a separate space for this optical service, but we will begin with the space that we have and go from there.  There are a number of ways that we can go with this, and are considering to not only offer the service through the clinic in town but to take this service to the mountain villages to be a blessing to the people and to give them this “gift of sight”.  We will keep you posted of the progress on this outreach!