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New Flying Doctors Program Takes Off |
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Written by John McCreadie
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Auburn pilot Dennis Freidig developed the “Adopt a Pueblo” program to help fund more healthcare clinics south of the border with the Gold Country Chapter of The Flying Doctors.
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The local chapter of The Flying Doctors – which has been generating neighborly goodwill with Mexico for about 25 years – will this week spread its wings testing a trial program to help fund more small private plane trips delivering sorely needed healthcare clinics to rural, and often isolated villages, beyond California’s southern border.
The new program – called “Adopt a Pueblo” (or Village) – seeks support from community organizations to help fund the cost of efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of the indigenous people of Mexico served by the nonprofit organization.
It’s all part of an effort by the Gold Country Chapter of The Flying Doctors – or Los Médicos Voladores – to generate additional funds for the group’s humanitarian endeavors that includes sending medical personnel to run short, temporary clinics in Mexico. The group hopes to expand its efforts with more trips if the new program soars.
The first trip with local sponsorship departed Thursday for its five-hour journey to provide dental services to the populace of San Ignacio in the Sonora region of Baja as part of a two-day clinic. The Auburn Host Lions Club, the program’s first sponsor, provided $750 to help fray airplane and fuel costs, and to provide the “little extras” that mean so much to locals in these remote villages, such as reading and sunglasses.
“It was just a natural fit for the Lions Club and the Flying Doctors to work together,” said Dennis Freidig, a Flying Doctors pilot who developed the “Adopt a Pueblo” program. “What a difference we can make together.”
Additional funding needed for the mission came from the local Flying Doctors organization and its four-person team of volunteers, who pay their own way to cover expenses such as rooms and meals.
Freidig is piloting the San Ignacio trip, which includes a dentist, a dental assistant and a translator.
The team will set-up a dental clinic that will attract villagers from miles around. While towns such as San Ignacio typically have a physician, few have the specialized services of optometrists or dentists.
“Dental and eye care are what villagers express as their biggest need,” said Judi Foy, vice president for the Gold Country Chapter of The Flying Doctors and trip coordinator for all four chapters that make up the California-based organization. “The need is so great because there are no services available.”
Foy, who will provide dental assistance on this trip, reports villagers have been known to go without food as a means to save money in order to afford dental services in a larger town or city. Eye care is another area The Flying Doctors focus on because it can radically improve the quality of life for villagers.
“It’s indescribable the feeling you get when you see a face light up because they can see better,” said Freidig.
Foy describes one woman who beamed after being fitted with glasses, who said: “Now I can see my grandson for the first time.”
“Thanks to the generosity of the Lions Club, we are taking down a bunch of reading glasses,” said Foy, noting that reading the Bible and sewing are key cultural activities in these communities.
“If you can’t see, you can’t sew,” she said.
Toothbrushes and crayons for the kids also will be handed out.
The mayor of San Ignacio also will receive a “certificate of adoption” from the Lions Club acknowledging their involvement in the new program.
Auburn dentist Dr. Richard Smith and former Auburn Spanish teacher Ginny Blankinship will join Foy and Freidig on this week’s mission.
Freideg, who has been piloting doctors for four years, plans to expand the trial program with the help of other community organizations.
“We sell bottled water and t-shirts at the Auburn Air Show to help raise funds,” he said. “But you have to sell a lot of each to make a difference. This program will help generate the additional funds we need to operate and hopefully, expand our efforts.”
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