International Health Ministry Celebrates 30 Years Caring for Poor

Predisan Health Ministries, an international health ministry, is celebrating its 30th anniversary of providing medical care to the people of Honduras, the second poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Predisan, founded by the late Dr. Robert Clark and his wife Doris, of Tucker, Ga., started the medical mission initiative to serve God and bring healing to the poor Central American nation.
Predisan operates 25 healthcare facilities in the nation of 8 million people. In addition to 22 clinics that provid primary care services, Predisan offers a birthing center, a regional referral center for inpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation and a specialty and surgical center, along with a chapel in its Good Samaritan Medical Center.
After Haiti, Honduras is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere. High rates of malnutrition, premature births, tuberculosis and congenital deformities plague the nation.
“Six out of 10 families in Honduras live on less than $1.25 a day. Food and shelter take priority, leaving healthcare often as unaffordable luxury,” said Dr. Amanda Madrid, Predisan’s CEO and medical director, and a native of Honduras. “With such health emergencies like Zika Virus and other sicknesses spreading, the services of Predisan often determine life or death for so many people in my native land.”
Predisan’s staff and volunteers work to improve the infant mortality rate by offering prenatal care, urgent care, nutrition, ophthalmology, oby-gyn services and general surgery. Volunteers from the United States visit Predisan to offer help, including teams of anesthesiologists, nurses, pharmacists and doctors.
Just last month, Oklahoma Christian University sent a team of physicians to Predisan clinics to treat patients. Pharmacy students from Lipscomb University, of Nashville, Tenn., also worked with patients in Honduras this winter. The school’s engineering students assisted on infrastructure projects.
Predisan – the combination of the Spanish words to proclaim predicar and to heal sanar --- has a $3.4 million annual budget. About half of that is raised from U.S. donors.
Unlike other charities, it trains local health care workers to treat patients, so not to rely on foreign personnel for medical staff. There are more than 200 currently on staff of which 98% are Honduran.
“We have been so blessed to have been able to save literally tens of thousands of lives over the past three decades,” said Linda Trevathan, chairman of the board of Predisan. “But we cannot continue to do God’s work without financial help from the community.”
Predisan will celebrate its anniversary with a charity dinner April 16 at Greater Atlanta Christian School in Norcross. For tickets and more information, visit http://predisan.org.