Every year a large group of Valley Medical Center’s staff goes on medical missions abroad to volunteer their services and much-needed medical supplies to people in impoverished areas.

Jeremy Wyatt is one such Valley staffer, who’s volunteered on several trips to Honduras and helped other Valley employees secure supplies for their medical missions to places like Haiti, Ethiopia, Guatemala and other countries.

The work is extremely rewarding and humbling, according to Wyatt. He’s a manager in Valley’s Perioperative Services, which is anything having to do with surgery. Wyatt manages the hospital’s anesthesia and ancillary support staff throughout Perioperative Services.

Medical staff typically use their vacation time and personal resources to fund their airfare and expenses for these types of trips. Staff members also partner with charitable organizations that organize the trips.

Wyatt went on his first medical mission about seven years ago, with the organization Healing the Children. The non-governmental, humanitarian agency partners with American healthcare providers to help children around the world get urgently needed medical care that is otherwise unobtainable.

Medical mission trips aren’t for the faint of heart, often taking volunteers to some harrowing locations, with limited resources and infrastructure.

On his first trip, it took Wyatt’s plane six attempts before it landed safely in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, at Toncontin International Airport. There was bad weather, but it’s also considered one of the most dangerous airports to fly into because of the mountainous region and its short runway, according to some travel websites.

Then it was a four-hour bus ride in a 1970s school bus to a city called Juticapla. From there, every morning, the medical team would walk the city’s dirt roads, about a mile, to Hospital San Francisco, where they would set up a clinic at 7 a.m. and receive patients. Armed guards stood outside the hospital, not because of conflict but just to keep order, Wyatt said.

“It’s a region where medical attention is definitely needed and to have the opportunity to bring these medical specialities, not just supplies or equipment, but the ability to teach – it’s just phenomenal,” he said.

Wyatt’s able to collect medical supplies from Valley through a special and strict protocol the hospital has for supplies that will be retired, are single-use, or have no value for the hospital anymore. Large items like beds or those with a value of $2,500 or more adhere to surplus guidelines and must have the Board of Trustees’ approval before the inventory is discharged from Valley. A lot of what Wyatt does falls under the no-value supply line, which could be old scrubs and sheets, which don’t have to have the approval of the Board of Trustees.

Before these volunteer medical teams leave, they brainstorm the types of surgeries they will do and supplies they will need, based on the information the recipient hospital gives them.

Wyatt served as an anesthesia technician on his first trip to Honduras, which was a pediatric orthopedic mission that attended to lots of fractures and clubbed feet. He has helped save lives in the U.S., but considers his experiences teaching people abroad how to do something as simple as properly bandage a wound to avoid infection, life-saving too.

Every morning a line would grow outside of the clinic and continue to grow into the hot and humid afternoon.

“There seemed to be easily over 100 families out there, primarily pediatric patients, and not once could you hear a child out screaming or families arguing or anything negative in that sense…,” said Wyatt. “They were all there and would immediately look up to you and just smile, just because they’re glad you’re there.”

Patients would be seen regardless of whether their ailments were past surgical intervention and some would be turned away, but all were thankful for the attention, Wyatt said. They were grateful for the volunteers at least taking the time to try to help, he said.

For Wyatt, the hardest part of medical missions is coming back to the states.

The team is hard pressed to get to all the people needing medical attention and it’s tough to leave them, he said. It also takes a day to refocus and not let the stark disparities get to you once back stateside, according to Wyatt.

“Individuals who go on these types of missions are just a different breed of individuals that are willing to sacrifice going to Disneyland or Disney World for a vacation, but to go to a potential Third World country and share knowledge or your skills with somebody,” he said.

Wyatt is taking a break from medical missions currently to further his educational career to better serve patient populations locally and abroad. The extensive personal financial costs along with vacation time is a factor in his decision, but he plans to go on more medical missions next year.