Ever wonder how life is some place else during this pandemic? In spring 2020 Franciscan Sister of Christian Charity Sister Anne Turba N.P. was part of a medical mission trip to Haiti. The health team included Sister Anne, senior nursing students, Brianna Neuser, director of the then SLC nursing program, and Dana Goetz, another registered nurse, plus two other persons. This group recently heard from Sister Maria, a religious serving across the border in the Dominican Republic who provided overnight accommodations. Sister Maria thanked the visitors on behalf of the three clinics in the towns of Los Cacaos, Tilory, and Circa la Source in Haiti which were the benefactors of the extra stored medicines the medical team agreed to donate to treat the people in these rural areas. These clinics have had much difficulty acquiring the routine medicines they need due to the difficulty with transportation limits resulting from restrictions imposed during this pandemic.
Sister Maria also reported that as of last weekend Sept 19-20 there have miraculously been no cases of covid-19 in her Dominican Republic towns of Vallejuelo nor Pedro Santana where the missionaries stayed. Nor has the virus touched our rural areas of service in Haiti, although the urban areas in both countries are experiencing many cases. Sisters Maria and Lidia along with Nene and his leadership team, from the early days of the pandemic, have visited the Haitian villages to educate the people about the virus and the safety measures they needed to practice to avoid contracting the virus, keeping in mind its potential deadliness due to limited hospital resources in those areas.
The sisters and their leadership teams look forward to visits from missionary and medical teams from the Green Bay Diocese when effective covid-19 vaccines become available.
Article Comments:
Sister Anne Marie Lom 10/19/2020 @ 11:10 am
I’m so grateful for this article. It shows that the Mission Trip was not an isolated event but made effective connections with an established program. Thank you for sharing this and I look forward to future “follow-ups” as they become available.