2011Cost* Approximately $2600 from Houston IAH *(Subject to cost increases in international air, hotels, ground transportation, departure taxes, visa costs and fuel surcharges) ItineraryThe BMI medical team departs Houston IAH on Continental Airlines and flies to Honolulu. The team has a full day (at their own personal expense) to do sightseeing in Honolulu. The team then leaves shortly after midnight on Air Pacific and flies to Nadi, Fiji, crossing the international date line and losing a day on the way. The team clears customs in Nadi, then is transported to Sigatoka, Fiji and the Shangri-la’s Fijian Resort Hotel. This hotel has given 10 complimentary rooms to the BMI team over the past several years. The team checks into the hotel, then takes its medical bags and is transported to the Sigatoka General Hospital, where the team will work all week. . The team sets up the clinic and surgery and later that day examines 50 of the Fijian Resort employees as a token of appreciation for the complimentary rooms. The surgical team performs cataract surgery that afternoon. The team eats breakfast at the hotel each morning, has lunch prepared by Mrs. Veramu Tora and the Methodist church women each day and eats the evening meal at a variety of restaurants at the hotel or the nearby town. From Monday through Friday noon, the clinic and surgical team work seeing about 600 patients in the clinic and performing around 75 eye surgeries. The team then rests on Saturday and Sunday leaves Sunday evening for the international airport in Nadi for the overnight flight to Honolulu, arriving the same day as they left. The team then has one morefull day in Honolulu (at the team member’s personal expense). The team departs early evening on Continental Airlines and arrives in Houston early the next morning. Background Info
From an association with Rev. Veramu Tora serving as a missionary in Belize and working with BMI teams there, BMI was invited to send eye teams to this South Pacific island who had only one ophthalmologist providing the country’s indigent eyecare. For the first three years, begining in 1995, the BMI teams worked in Viseisei Village using make shift buildings for our clinic. The teams had no facility in which to perform surgery. Then BMI was invited by Dr. Ernest Oo, chief of Ophthalmology for the Lautoka General Hospital to begin working at the hospital.. Dr. Oo is a dynamic ophthalmologist with retinal subspeciality training, who through his work with Lions International was able to build a first class eye department in the hospital and was able to get the operating room fully equipped for eye surgery as well as obtain lasers and fundus photography for treating the very high incidence of Diabetes in the population. Each year, BMI has sent a team to Fiji to help provide medical and surgical care for the underserved. Over the past three years, at the suggestion of the Fijian government, it was suggested that BMI teams work in Sigatoka where there was a large population but essentially without eyecare. BMI has donated an operating microscope, a lensometer, and a keratometer to the Sigatoka Hospital.
Click the link for a RealVideo clip of the "Benevolent Missions International" video:
Surgery (2.2MB)
Some links to other sites about Fiji:
|
Fiji 
