Dr. Cindy Hoover is a missionary and member of Bethany Covenant Church, back in Mexico after a summer stint in Haiti  Here is one of her reports from Haiti:

...and here is her Blog (offsite link):

...and here is her November Letter to us all:
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November 2010
Saludos desde Oaxaca.
I hope that you had a wonderful celebration for Thanksgiving yesterday.

 We gathered as a “Covenant Family” yesterday here in Oaxaca – Covenant missionaries and Covenanters in Mission coming together to share a great US style Thanksgiving feast and to just enjoy some time together. When we were thanking God for all the good things we enjoy, we all agreed that our supporters in the US who participate with us in ministry through offerings of prayer, encouragement, and money are one of the things we’re most grateful for. We could not be here serving in Mexico if it weren’t for you back home supporting us.

With my trip to Haiti shortly before my return to Oaxaca still forefront in my mind, Thanksgiving also reminded me that we are blessed in order to be a blessing to others. Haiti is still reeling from the effects of the earthquake, with rebuilding now further complicated by hurricanes and the cholera epidemic. Development efforts are slow, and often it’s hard to show immediate results and to tell wonderful success stories.

But the work must go on. I am looking at ways to partner with Covenant World Relief partners in Haiti to continue working on the development of an appropriate and effective health system in a couple of rural areas. My hope is to help develop a way to further train the local Haitian doctors, nurse practitioners, and other health providers, in pediatrics, surgery, internal medicine, etc…, using a program that would combine not only visits to Haiti by me and other specialists to work side by side in their areas of expertise, but also to have a capacity for ongoing cyber-consults or cyber-rounds – similar to a method being used by the University of Miami for their tent hospital in Port au Prince.

The rural areas have little access to specialists and no resources for patients to go to Port au Prince to receive treatment, so this would help build a system of local care and appropriate referrals outside of the local area.

With this I would also like to look at how to create a laboratory system that provides what most physicians would consider absolutely necessary basic testing capability. Without feedback from testing to help confirm or direct diagnosis, physicians and other providers are left with a shot gun approach to treatment, and never really know what was effective or learn from treating patients. This is wasteful of limited pharmacy resources and is just not a good way to practice medicine.

So I have big dreams for Haiti – those who know me well aren’t surprised. This doesn’t mean that I am leaving Mexico, just that I am looking at a way to spend the majority of my time in Mexico, but also stay involved in Haiti with periodic trips, but mainly cyber-connections.

To see what I did and saw in Haiti, you can check out my blog at www.oaxacadoc.wordpress.com. I still have one or two more posts on Haiti to put up (my return to Oaxaca in mid-October interrupted my writing, and I’ve been rather occupied getting resettled here) and will soon also have a post about what’s happening here with Semillas de Salud.

One other way you can help Haiti is to purchase a calendar I created from photos I took during my time there. There are some pretty shots and some that show poverty and destruction in the calendar, but this is not really a calendar to soothe or to touch just aesthetic sensibilities – I would hope that each time you look at an image from Haiti, you would thank God for all your blessings, and think about how you can use your blessings to bless others.

The calendar is named Haiti 2011: Degagé. Degagé is Creole (and also French I believe) for the idea more or less of to do the best you can with what you’ve got. That term perfectly fit how I found the practice of medicine and ministry in general to be during my time in Haiti. All profits from the sale of the calendar will be used for health development work. You can preview the calendar and order it for $19.99 at www.lulu.com/product/calendar/my-calendar/13837122.

Again, thank you for your ongoing support and participation in my ministry. Please pray with me for the people of Haiti, for the ongoing ministry of health screening with children in Oaxaca, Mexico, and that as God’s servants, we might take the many resources with which he has blessed us and bless others so that this coming holiday season, more and more people will truly be able to celebrate Christmas in its truest sense.

Bendiciones.
Cindy Hoover (aka Oaxacadoc)

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...and here is one from August 2010...

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"August 27th.
Some random things from seeing kids in the clinic today:

It is really hard to put on powderless gloves when your hands are hot and sweaty. After laughing at my attempts, the nurse finally showed me the trick of shaking it out, holding wide the wrist and blowing into it, and squeezing air down into the fingers (don’t try this if the gloves need to be sterile ). It was still a bit of a challenge, but at least my fingers were starting to get in the right slots.

Much of pediatrics is the same wherever you are. Kids get colds and ear infections and mothers worry about kids. The main difference here is that the moms aren’t all asking for the most expensive newest antibiotic and amoxicillin still seems to work.Some things aren't the same though.  I have been surprised to find that most of the mothers don't know the birth weight of their babies (even when born in the hospital) and that the clinic workers also aren't very tuned in to what babies weigh.  They had one 2 month old weighing 28 pounds.  Most weights are rounded to the nearest kg (2.2 pounds)!

Power outages, while inconvenient to me while seeing patients must really be annoying to the US surgeon here this week. There is no back up generator at the hospital.

Unneeded suffering is disturbing wherever it happens. I saw what was probably the saddest case of my career in pediatrics today. A totally cachectic 2 year old girl was brought in by mom, who has one other at home and one on the way. The child was normal till 6 months ago according to mom, when she started to waste away. She was just a skeleton with pale flesh (really noticeable in a Haitian child) and horrible scaling rashes and a pitiful pleading look in her eyes. In taking the history, I was asking mom about HIV history. She handed me a paper to show that she was HIV negative, but somehow she had never noticed and no one had ever told her that also on that slip was that she was RPR positive -- indicating syphilis. This child requires more lab work and more care than could be provided here, but very likely has congenital syphilis and protein calorie malnutrition. This could have been prevented! The positive is that there still is time for mom to be treated and hopefully her current pregnancy will have a better outcome. I thought of taking a photo of Julie, to include, but then decided that she is indelibly etched in my mind, and a photo here would not be respectful and caring of her dignity. Do please pray for little Julie though.

It was a tiring day -- after mainly seeing the children of the staff at the hospital, the word has gotten out that there is a pediatrician here, and many are coming who have been in need of care for a while, some in need of more care than I can provide here, and sadly at times, more care than is to be found in all of Haiti at this point. Some valuable programs disappeared with the earthquake and so a country with poor health care coverage to begin with now has even more access issues and holes in vital areas of care. Pray that the various organizations working here can start to coordinate efforts and work together to provide the needed services and care and that aid goes to those who should be receiving it. Pray also that both Haitian and expatriate professionals who see the various areas where their expertise could make a difference will be willing to view this as an opportunity for ministry and for giving back indirectly to all who have made their current situation possible.

Thanks for continuing on this journey with me."
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 Previously she served in Mexico.  her service area in Oaxaca included some of the poorer areas and least hospitable climate of the country.  Diseases such as dengue fever are well known here.  But she has quietly shown the people how, with God's help, they can help themselves to have a healthier and better life.

Soon after her arrival, she began by training her hosts in proper drinking water quality and safety measures to prevent the spread of water-borne infectious diseases and parasites.

Working with local churches and local authorities, she founded a program of health care screening services. She trained volunteer villagers to teach basic hygiene, perform health screening tests, and recognize and refer more serious illnesses for treatment by government physicians. 

This program was expanded when schools of the area invited her volunteers to come provide their first systematic health screening, vision screening and anemia screening.  Short term mission teams of health care professionals from the USA have joined her in implanting this effort.

Working with the women of one village, Dr. Cindy used church-donated seed money and locally pooled resources to help them start a community bank, which they use to fund loans to improve local small businesses. 

These loans help them to improve their living conditions, learn financial responsibility and decision making skills, and promote goal oriented saving.  Christians and non-Christians have worked side by side. The gospel is heard at bank meetings. The bank has more than doubled in size and is now the source to fund another bank in a neighboring village.  God multiplies his returns many fold.

Dr. Cindy's work preparing God's fields continues. Please remember her and her villagers in your prayers, and contact the office if you wish to help her mission.

Mexico