<January 2009>

January’s Charity of the Month: Bayside Medical Missions

The surgeries performed by Bayside Medical Missions (BMM) team of volunteer doctors not only correct physical abnormalities, they also open a world of renewed opportunity for underprivileged children throughout Ecuador.

BMM is a nonprofit organization based in Fairhope, Alabama, that coordinates teams of volunteer doctors and medical professionals who travel to underserved communities to provide corrective surgeries for children with skeletal malformations.

The MDRT Foundation awarded a $5,000 grant to BMM to help fund the Transformation09 project, which will perform 300 medical evaluations and 80 corrective surgeries for children in need throughout Ecuador. This grant was sponsored by Alfred C. Corina, CLU, ChFC, a 15-year MDRT member from Mobile, Alabama.

The corrective surgeries are performed by volunteer doctors from the U.S. and local Ecuadorian medical professionals. These surgeries provide valuable practical learning experiences for surgical teams, which often include medical students. Doctors operate on children with congenital malformations such as Clubfoot, dislocated hips and Syndactyly (webbing and fusion of fingers and toes); non-congenital conditions treated include deformed limbs due to improperly healed fractures.

Children receive follow-up treatment from local volunteer physicians who work in concert with BMM. Children who were once often confined to bed due to their prior physical limitations are given are new lease on life following their surgeries. They can attend school, play with their peers and become a more functioning member of their family unit. Children are not only healed physically, but their confidence, self-esteem, social interaction and educational development also improves measurably.

BMM was founded by orthopedic surgeons Dr. Paul Fellers Jr. and Dr. Robert G. Eubanks in 1999. Although current activities are concentrated in Ecuador, BMM medical teams have also performed corrective surgeries on children in Haiti, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea and Honduras.