CAMTA has many wonderful participants in Ecuador AND CAMTA's Spanish language blog

Hi All,
I would like to announce that the Spanish language blog, http://camtaparaquitenos.blogspot.com/ has been assumed by Pablo Montahuano of Quito. Pablo received a total hip from CAMTA in February of this year and he has enthusiastically endorsed our work and is now a CAMTA volunteer!

Pablo will be updating the blog as we progress towards the Mission 2009 and during the mission.

And I would like to describe for you our Ecuadorean CAMTA volunteers:

Maria Clara Duran is our Quito travel coordinator and we are so happy to have her help again this year. Marieclara believes strongly in our work. We met her through her father, Cesar Duran who is a colleague of Don Stewart, member of the CAMTA board. She and her sister operate a travel business in Quito. Al Tardif is our travel man here in Edmonton and he works closely with Marieclara throughout the year.

Janela Romero is a translator for us. She lives in Guayaquil and knows Pablo through family. I look forward to meeting her.

Mari Teresa Vásconez and Juan José Vásconez have worked as translators too. This mother and son team are sensitive, understanding and compassionate.

I cannot tell you how exciting it is for me personally to see the growth in CAMTA from INSIDE Ecuador. It is delightful to have these five working for CAMTA.

Our longest standing participant in CAMTA is Fern Cannon. Fern lives in Katy, Texas but she lived in Cuenca when she first came to translate for CAMTA's staff in that city in 2000. We weren't CAMTA then — it wasn't formed until August 2001.

Luis Piedrahita is a pediatric orthopod in Tucson, Arizona. But his roots are in Quito. His father was an eminent orthopedic surgeon in Quito. Luis participates in the mission annually.

We were fortunate that both Fern and Luis were able to enjoy Edmonton in April during a blizzard when they came here for the strategic planning exercise.

The staff at the Tierra Nueva who welcome us so warmly each year include Dra. Patricia Jarrin and Dr. Manuel Ordonez. Patricia is the coordinator of external brigades and a leading physician at the Tierra Nueva. Dr. Ordonez is the orthopedic surgeon who does yeoman's work before our mission by assessing patients and getting the preoperative preparations completed. After the mission he personally does the medical follow-up on each and every one of the patients with repeated post-operative “control” clinics.

Without our Ecuadorean colleagues we would not have the ability to connect with sensitivity and respect to the Ecuadorean community. We feel that we have great friends in Quito within the city and within the Tierra Nueva hospital and a good part of that is because of the people I have described above.

Thanks.
John
Secretary
Canadian Association of Medical Teams Abroad