Bert McKinnon was one of the founders of Northern Arizona Volunteer Medical Corp (NAVMC). He travelled with surgical teams to Armenia and Brazil, where he faced the challenges of providing surgical care with limited resources. He provided the highest quality of orthopedic care to his patients in Northern Arizona and was a major influence in […]
The lead-up to this trip has been rough. Haiti has been experiencing escalating conflict for many months, and the decision to proceed with our trip was constantly in question. Many members of our team decided to stay home out of legitimate concerns for safety. Flights were delayed. Bull was hacking up a lung…then Crystal, then […]
On a chilly pre-dawn morning, Molly Brown pulled into Dr. John “Bull” Durham’s Flagstaff driveway and started to load her truck with six-foot-long rolls of blue fabric. Brown the executive director of the Northern Arizona Volunteer Medical Corps, would normally be at Durham’s garage checking on medical supplies for one of the two trips […]
The NAVMC team landed in Port-au-Prince 5 days ago, and it has been non-stop since. From day one, this trip has been different. In recent weeks, President Jovenal Moïse has been implicated in two government audits on the misuse of billions of dollars in Venezuelan aid meant to help the country’s poor. Thousands of […]
By Kevin Charles Fleming ’09 Photographs by Mark Lipczynski, Illustrations by Yann Kebbi MAY 14, 2019 WHEN DR. JOHN “BULL” DURHAM ’80 MET WOODJINA IN A STIFLING, crowded ward of Port-au-Prince’s La Paix Hospital, the five-year-old girl was dying. For weeks, she’d been confined to a dirty mattress, unable to walk, beset by a spiking […]
Sex trafficking can be a hard issue to approach in a community, but it is not impossible, according to two members of ARISE Project for Humanity, founder Williamson Sintyl and board member Coco Berthmann. As a part of ARISE, Sintyl runs a mentorship program in Haiti to help women and vulnerable children advocate […]
Molhenne was supposed to die. When our medical team left Haiti in December 2017, her blood count was insufficient to sustain life especially in someone who had just lost both of her legs. She has been HIV positive since birth and medications had kept the virus at bay. At 17 years old she presented to […]
NAVMC has just returned from its 3rd trip to Haiti this year. Attached is a trip summary. We wanted to share with you our successes from Haiti understanding that this is only one part of the work that we are doing locally and globally. If you have already given to help support this work, we […]
NAVMC took 18 medical professionals to Bolivia the first week of November. The team saw almost 50 people in clinic and booked 36 patients. We performed 40 procedures including many gallbladder removals, hysterectomies, uterine and bladder prolapse repairs, lipoma removals, and hernia repairs. Dr. Andy Aldridge and Dr. Carolina Martinez repaired an inguinal hernia on […]