A visit to El Torno
Missioners and staff in Santa Cruz for the March 2024 Oncological Surgery Mission Trip were invited to visit the municipal hospital of El Torno.
For a full decade now, our general surgery program has focused on increasing timely and affordable access to essential surgical procedures through mobile surgery campaigns that take high-quality care to patients in their own communities. This approach has been so successful that it now represents the majority of surgeries performed in this program.
Our mobile surgery campaigns consist of 4-7 day surgical team and equipment deployments at under-resourced rural and peri-urban hospitals. They are organized and led by our partners at Puente de Solidaridad, working closely with a cohort of Bolivian general surgeons and anesthesiologists who take turns staffing the teams. In addition to caring for patients in desperate need of hernia, gallbladder, or colon surgeries, the visiting doctors train their peers at the host hospitals in advanced laparoscopic techniques and evaluate and fill surgical equipment and supply needs. The campaigns also serve to develop our relationships with local governments and public hospitals throughout the country, connecting them to a range of resources to serve their communities.
In 2021, while international travel was paused amid the pandemic, a Bolivian documentary film crew visited El Torno to produce the 6-minute video, Shining Forth Together.
One of our mobile campaign host sites is the municipal hospital of El Torno. This small public hospital has partnered with us since 2019, and was featured in our 2021 gala video. Earlier this spring, members of one of our mission teams had the pleasure to visit and see the impact of our partnership in this hospital and the surrounding community.
Nurse Jovita pointed out the hospital ICU’s sole ventilator, donated through Solidarity Bridge.
Our team was joyfully welcomed by Jovita Hurtado Caballero, the indomitable nurse who runs El Torno hospital. Known by all as ‘Nurse Jovita’, she is a legend not only in El Torno but in the wider region for her decades of untiring dedication to improving healthcare in her community. We were also joined by colorectal surgeon Dr. Fernando Nogales. Dr. Nogales was born in El Torno—Nurse Jovita took care of him as an infant—and now leads our mobile surgery campaigns there and in other nearby towns. Dr. Nogales was featured in an October 2021 blog that described his journey from young surgeon –struggling to practice his specialty amid limited access to proper equipment and supplies– to his partnership with us. That partnership has connected Dr. Nogales with both the specific equipment and supplies required for his sub-specialty, and a steady stream of patients who need his care.
Along our tour, we also met Dr. Liliana Chiri Mamani (right), a former surgical resident under Dr. Nogales’ mentorship who is now on staff in El Torno and is eager to expand the hospital’s permanent surgical offerings.
Our tour took us through the operating and recovery rooms, patient wards, and the labor and delivery wing established decades ago by Nurse Jovita herself. Along the way, we were greeted with warm smiles by diverse staff and even patients who had heard about the contributions of Puente de Solidaridad and Solidarity Bridge. In the ICU, Jovita pointed out the unit’s sole ventilator, donated through Solidarity Bridge during the pandemic. Jovita related the stories of a number of patients suffering respiratory failure due to Covid or other conditions whose lives were saved by this vital machine.
At the end of the tour, Nurse Jovita surprised us with a plaque to commemorate Solidarity Bridge’s 25 years of partnership in support of the most vulnerable in Bolivia. It is a true honor for us to stand in solidarity with local health professionals as they work diligently to improve the health of their communities. They inspire hope in us, and together we are certain that a more just, compassionate, and interdependent world is being born.