Team 5 Completes its Fourth Missions in 12 months

While the world still sleeps, makes excuses, and continues to be lazy... Team 5 Foundation has again stepped up and complete its fourth mission in the past twelve months! 

Mission: 
Provide Dental & Medical Clinics to The Lost "Wayuu Tribe" which sits between the Colombia & Venezuela border in a desert area where there is a severe lack of fresh potable drinking water, intestinal parasites are rampant, and almost no medical assistance is provided. 

Team: 
Eric S. Linder, PA-R, MSc, FAWM Chris Duncan Vandesande Bryan Burjor Langdana Pia Saskia Müller christine dube & 2 medical students: Gabriella & Katie 

Logistics: 
An expert team was created including remote medical specialists for intensive care, family practice, ultrasound, emergency medicine, parasitology, and expedition dentistry from five countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Croatia, Canada, and the United States. 

After dozens of hours of travel to Bogota, Colombia we would then fly another 2 hours to the north to Rioacha followed by a 3-hour bus to Basecamp. Each clinic day incorporated a 2-hour police or military transport each way to the villages across dirt, desert, and washed-out roads from the flash floods. 

Complications:
After months of web calls and documentation, we arrived in the country to find more corruption, a lack of government assistance, failed local contacts, and translators not arriving. Pushing through these problems we found new contacts in the police, military and local pastors to be able to provide high-quality healthcare without being influenced by local corruption. Furthermore, demonstrations by the Wayuu for children dying of malnutrition included roadblocks of cutdown trees which delayed our transportation but we negotiated our way past it with a "Medical Mission" placard on the bus. 

Outcome: 
Over 600 Wayuu people were treated in dental and medical clinics, prescribed medications, treated for gastrointestinal parasites, provided ultrasounds, and taught the Army a Combat Life-Saver Course to 20 soldiers on the base who have had no medical training in the past. 

Conclusion:
No medical expedition will ever go as planned. You need to have backup plans, bugout routes, and other contacts in the area other than your primary one. TEAM5 is a very dynamic foundation that spends countless hours and months pre-planning missions to be successful which includes partnerships with local medical officers and the Ministry of Health. Our members and students are hand selected, and the locations are researched thoroughly with contingency plans in place in case of local conflicts or natural disasters. 

We thank all of our sponsors, followers, supporters and of course our volunteer team of practitioners who get the job done. Stay Human!

Massif® WileyX-Shop.nl Mountain Hardwear Las Vegas Sands Corp. Darn Tough Vermont® Butterfly Network, Inc. MedAire Refuge Medical YETI Daniel Winkler Jason Knight 

#humanitarian #military #sof #colombia #medical #wayuu #team5