Despite a worldwide pandemic, a Washington native physician recently took the opportunity to travel outside the U.S. to provide medical services as part of a mission program.

Dr. Lindsey Van Duyn of Washington County Hospital and Clinics spent a week in Haiti last month to serve in a clinic in the town of Gramothe. Van Duyn has done previous mission work in Honduras and the Dominican Republic, so she had long been interested in going to Haiti. She says this clinic is open about five times a year, “We really didn’t know what to expect, so you are essentially a general practice provider and you have hundreds of patients that line up outside of the clinic. Everybody from a pregnant woman and this could be as young as 14 years of age, all the way up to an elderly patient and they could need anything.”

Van Duyn says the patient treatments ranged from blood pressure, diabetes, and routine checkups, to months-old wounds and joint injections for the elderly, which she says was one of her favorites because it would provide great relief to those patients. Van Duyn encourages those who haven’t done mission work to give it a try, “When you go on a mission trip you are the one that’s blessed. You pay to go, nothing is given to you, and yet when you go you serve and you give everything you have to people who have no idea how much they don’t have but yet they’re peaceful, they’re happy, they’re so thankful.”

Though she saw a large number of patients and there was a two-mile mountainous walk to and from the clinic each day, Van Duyn found the atmosphere to be relaxed and peaceful, and she was honored to be able to help the people of Gramothe.