The team, which comprised Orthopaedic (Morris, Sorrells, Hudson and Banks), Cranio facial and plastics spent the first day visiting a local school built by the 'Operation New life' ministry. Most of the team (over 30 strong) came from Littlerock Arkansas with Peter Morris and Steve Banks being the only non American contributors.

Honduras is poor and has little infrastructure in terms of accessible health care. We toured the local 'public hospital' (Esquela) which is seriously underfunded. The local people heard of the medical teams imminent arrival in Honduras, consequently, the clinics were rather well attended. We expected 20 and there must have been more than 80, with many stopping us in the corridors pleading with us to see their x-rays etc.

Patients have to pay for any treatment they receive. As you can imagine, many conditions go untreated as a result. The pace of the week was frenetic in the extreme. We certainly didn't get to do much sightseeing (Tegucigalpa is not aesthetically pleasing to the eye) as the average day went from 0530 until 2200 hours or so.

The orthopaedic team managed to do 3 hip replacements (one being a very difficult revision) and 8 knee replacements on people that would ordinarily never receive treatment for their crippling arthritis.

We found time to conduct a learning centre, where live surgery was beamed to a local hotel where Honduran surgeons were able to view the surgery on a large screen. We believe the future success  of these missions revolve around education and local empowerment.  The local surgeons have the skill base, they just need specific training on joint replacement.

Global plans to attend every year taking different surgeons and scrub teams along.