Opening a Hospital by Steve Brown

Guanaja is an island with 10,000 people and no hospital. All medical concerns and emergencies require an evacuation to Roatan or the mainland of Honduras, which is often impossible.


After his first fishing trip to Fly Fish Guanaja, Matt Narawki saw the desperate need and funded Guanaja’s first hospital through Food for the Poor. Matt is a Fish for Change hero and board member.


The hospital is built, but more is needed to open its doors and maintain. We’ve been in meetings with the local mayor, doctors, and the amazing people from Clinica Esperanza in Roatan to discuss what it will take.


Fish for Change students, the nurses from Roatan, and Mirella the local doctor opened the hospital a few days ago to clean the place and organize medical supplies, also funded by Matt Nawrocki through Project Cure. We started sweeping, mopping, washing walls, and moving the new equipment.


30 minutes into our work the power went out. The fans stopped, the rooms darkened and we continued our work with sweat soaking into our clothes.


Just after we mopped the first floor, dusted off the first roller bed, and opened the first boxes, there was a panicked commotion outside the hospital. Villagers were unloading a man from a taxi who was severely electrocuted while working for the power company. Our first patient had already arrived, and he was in bad shape.


The team of medics, who just happened to be there, went to work immediately. Students went scrambling for buckets of water, gauze, tape, bandages. We tore through boxes in the dark using lights from our phones. We found enough supplies for the nurses to bandage and IV the guy with fluids. We helped carry the stretcher into a truck that drove him to the boat ambulance, that took him Roatan. He lost his hand but we probably saved his life.


Our goal this week was to discover what the hospital needs to open. We learned at this stage, it needs a generator. The power company in Guanaja is very unreliable, and apparently dangerous too. The hospital can’t open without a generator, and there is no immediate funding coming from the government or anywhere else.


Fish for Change Week 4 students are going to make it happen with a social media, story-driven fundraiser. We are just waiting for a quote on the generator from San Pedro Sula.


This initiative will save lives in a beautiful place, and we know we can make it happen.