An Example of the Work that CMA supports:

The Catholic Medical Association supports Medical groups that go out into the world to help those most in need. Here is a an example from Mission Docots Association (supported by the CMA) with their work in Guatemala.

Guatemala

GOAL: Improve patient care and train local health professionals The best type of departure a Mission Doctor can make when leaving a mission hospital, is the one when they are no longer needed! This is what happened when Dr. Brent Burket and Dr. Jennifer Thoene left Guatemala.

In 2007, they arrived in Lake Attilan, with their four young children, and in 2010 when they left, there was no longer a need for long-term mission doctors.

Hospitalito, Lake Atitlan was originally founded by Blessed Stanley Rother, a priest from Oklahoma, who was martyred in Guatemala in 1981. The original hospital he helped build was destroyed by torrential rains in the wake of Hurricane Stan in 2005, that brought devastating mudslides, taking the lives of as many as 1,400 and displacing 5,000 people. Within two weeks after the October mudslides, doctors reopened a temporary hospital in a building that had been a backpacker’s hostel on the other side of the town, on the shores of Lake Atitlan. This is the Hospital where Brent and Jennifer began serving only two years later, but work had already begun on a more permanent home.

The presence of these two hard-working physicians helped make it possible for the community to focus on the construction of the new hospital. As family practice doctors, they provided a constant presence, available to care for patients of all ages. This rural community of indigenous Mayan Tzujuhil people wanted a new hospital so badly that even the little children were raising money to buy a brick to be used in construction. Everyone became involved in making this dream come true.

When Brent and Jennifer left in 2010, they were really no longer needed here. They left with the gratitude of the people, knowing that the local healthcare community was ready to work without long-term doctors from MDA.

Brent and Jennifer, however, did not return to begin working in the United States. Feeling that God was still calling their family to serve, they returned to visit family for a bit, then headed out to answer God’s call to care for the poor in rural Cameroon, West Africa for another three years! When they left Cameroon three years later, they passed the baton to Mission Doctor, Martha Franz, the second best way to leave!

The new hospital, dedicated in 2011