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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Flying Doctors setting up in Inland Northwest

Organization sends doctors to remote parts of world

An organization that sends doctors, dentists and nurses to remote parts of the world is setting up an office in the Inland Northwest and seeking volunteers to treat “the poorest of the poor.”

Based in Georgia since 1990, Flying Doctors of America runs eight to 10 medical missions a year, managing logistics for teams of medical providers who treat people with little or no access to medical care in Latin America, Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

Founder Allan Gathercoal and executive director Liz Marcela Gathercoal, a husband-and-wife team, moved to Coeur d’Alene last summer. They’re aiming to drum up volunteers in the West.

“We’re hugely saturated in the East,” Allan Gathercoal said.

They talked about their work last week, a day after returning from Madagascar, where they led a team of 20 volunteers who saw 1,600 people in four days.

About 150 people sought dental care each day; 50 sought eye care; and 200 were visited by the eight physicians in the group, Allan Gathercoal said. A triage system ensured the physicians got the “heavy duty cases,” while nurses and others handled simpler cases, such as well-baby checks.

The area they visited had a small clinic staffed by a nursing assistant equipped with little but aspirin and an antibiotic.

“We think of (the Affordable Care Act) as being the issue of the day,” Gathercoal said. “The fact is, we have medical care. There’s people that have zero. There’s some people we took care of who’d never seen a doctor and never seen a dentist.”

Since Gathercoal founded the nonprofit organization in Norcross, Georgia, it has flown more than 200 missions. Teams have traveled to Mexico, South America and Central America, Kenya and Southeast Asia. Others have gone to China, Mongolia, the Caribbean and India.

In total, Flying Doctors volunteers have provided medical care to more than 200,000 people, Gathercoal said.

Relatively short and affordable, the typically weeklong missions are designed to make it easy for physicians and others to help people in great need. Organizers all over the world handle transportation, lodging, meals and other logistical hurdles.

Volunteers pay their own costs, along with a $585 donation to the organization for operating expenses. Missions posted last week on the organization’s website cost from $2,285, for a mission to Guatemala, to $3,985, for a trip to Madagascar.

The teams set up operations in schools, churches, local clinics or elsewhere and work with local residents to spread the word about what kind of services will be available.

Each volunteer team is made of about 15 physicians, dentists and dental assistants, nurses and nursing assistants, pharmacists and other medical workers, with a couple of slots for medical students or others who to play support roles.

For volunteers who may feel burned out working in the U.S. medical system, a mission offers a chance to make a big difference quickly in patients’ lives, said Gathercoal, a pilot and former minister. Patients have shown their appreciation by returning with live chickens or fresh vegetables they’ve dug from their gardens.

“In the United States, people are more healthy,” said Liz Marcela Gathercoal, a Peruvian who met her husband working as a translator for him during a mission in 2003. “When (doctors) check the people, they are OK most of the time. … But when they go to the missions, most of the people have something (wrong). So they really see interesting cases.”

In the Madagascar trip that recently ended, the team saw a boy infected by a type of flea that lays eggs under people’s toenails, Liz Marcela Gathercoal said. Infected children dig at their toes and sometimes lose them, she said. But the flea is easily eradicated with medication.

When Flying Doctors started, it joined just a few organizations in the U.S. dedicated to medical missions, Allan Gathercoal said. Now there are hundreds.

Medical missions based in Spokane include Healing Hearts Northwest, whose volunteers perform heart surgeries in Rwanda, and Partnering for Progress, whose volunteers travel to Africa to deliver medical and dental care and train local health care providers.

Some 3,000 people attended the Global Missions Health Conference earlier this month in Louisville, Kentucky, and more than half of them were first-timers, said Kacie Chase, who runs the event. About 125 medical mission organizations set up exhibits at the event, the annual conference of MedicalMissions.com.

MedicalMissions.com, a project of Southeast Christian church in Louisville, vets the organizations that post profiles on its site, searchable by potential volunteers’ specialty areas and interests.

When choosing a mission trip, she said, medical workers should consider their own goals, whether a trip aligns with their values, and whether a group runs missions to parts of the world where they want to go. Will mentors or experienced providers be available to help younger volunteers? They also should ask, she advised: “Is the group established, and is it financially accountable?”

Sam Hoagland, a Boise attorney and pharmacist recently elected as a district judge, volunteered for a “beginner’s mission” to Guatemala through Flying Doctors in 2012.

Hoagland was busy distributing pain relievers, vitamins, antibiotics, eyedrops and drugs for diabetes and heartburn. A gynecologist on his team identified breast cancer in a couple of women and worked to secure longer-term care for them, and dentists pulled teeth and provided other basic care.

He felt some frustration that the help he could offer was limited, Hoagland said. But he thought he made a difference for the patients he saw.

“It was an adventure,” Hoagland said.