BUNKIE, LA (AP) — Dr. Don Hines of Bunkie helped save a couple of men's lives when he was a U.S. Navy flight surgeon 54 years ago.
Now, with the extraordinary tool of telemedicine, he wants to help save — and improve — the lives of some 450 children at an orphanage in Guatemala.
Former Bunkie residents Mike and Dottie Clark have run the Casa Aleluya village since 1989. Hines, who retired in 2008 after 15 years as a state senator, including the last four as senate president, learned about the orphanage a few years ago after reading a story about it in the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. Mike's sister in Baton Rouge wrote the story after visiting Guatemala to help celebrate Mike and Dottie's 50th anniversary.
The Clarks, who lost three children because of birth defects, have six adopted children. Haunting images of children living amidst filth and poverty that Mike saw during a one-week mission trip to Guatemala led to his returning with Dottie to Guatemala in 1989 to start the orphanage. Its purpose is to house, feed and educate the children — while "spreading the good news of Jesus Christ," according to the orphanage's web site.
After reading the story about the orphanage, where many of the children have been abused or abandoned or are in witness protection, Hines took an interest.
His desire to help "rescue" these children harkens to a day in 1961 when he and a helicopter mission commander and a hospital corpsman rescued two naval students from a military plane that crashed at the rim of Spanish Lake in New Iberia. The flight instructor did not survive the accident, but the two Hines helped rescue survived with treatable injuries, and Hines received a commendation for his actions from the Secretary of the Navy at the time, John B. Connally.
Five decades later, Hines was looking to help save lives again — this time at Clark's orphanage.
"I called Mike and asked what I could do as far as medical care for the students," the 81-year-old Hines recalled on a recent rainy day while sitting in his doctor's office, where he works part-time as a small town family physician. His deep-set eyes seemingly peer at a visitor through shadowy eyebrows, and he has a dimpled Y on his chin.
"I got to thinking about telemedicine," said Hines, who was on the Avoyelles Parish School Board for 21 years, "and how, if a patient in Bunkie can be seen by a cardiologist in Shreveport using telemedicine, why couldn't a child in Guatemala be seen by a doctor in Louisiana?"
That thought process led to some transformational changes at the orphanage and in the world of telemedicine. His record in the state senate shows Hines has a soft spot for children in need, having chaired the special task force that led to the creation of the Children's Health Insurance Program which, he said, is a model for the rest of the nation.
"Don has two hearts," said Clark, an ordained Baptist minister, in an email from the orphanage. "He has one heart of generosity and another heart of compassion. After visiting Casa here in Guatemala, Don formed a team from LSU and Waycross, Georgia to purchase and install the telemedicine equipment at Casa."
One remarkable sign of success the Clarks have had with their mission is that the first child who joined the orphanage 26 years ago, Josué Espana, is now the telemedicine coordinator at the orphanage.
"Two weeks after installing the equipment," said Clark, "one of our older girls experienced chest pains, and we had a cardiologist (at LSU) examine her, who correctly diagnosed the problem, and she had open heart surgery immediately. The second anniversary of her surgery was August 16, and she is in college and doing very well."
The cardiologist at LSU, explained Clark, sent the report of his examination back to them and they took it to a cardiologist there who was able to plan and perform the procedure.
Espana, speaking through a telemedicine computer, said telemedicine is "breaking barriers in all doctor-patient consults, and we are benefiting from it."
Hines also worked with area Rotary clubs and a local church to secure the money to get a dental X-ray machine for the orphanage's clinic along with a complete blood count machine.
Paula Guy is the CEO of Global Partnership for TeleHealth in Waycross, Georgia, which is the most comprehensive telehealth network in the nation. She fairly gushes about the impact Hines has made at the Casa orphanage.
"If it was not for him, this (breaking of barriers) would not have happened (at Casa)," said Guy, who met Hines at a federal telemedicine program and who, two days after being asked by Hines for help in securing a telemedicine cart, traveled with him to the orphanage with a donated cart and helped install it.
"He continues to buy lab equipment," Guy said, noting one recent such piece of equipment that's been installed is a portable X-ray machine that produces "incredibly crisp and clear images." Her company now works in eight countries "all because of the work Dr. Hines has done," Guy said.
The son of a cotton and cattle farmer, Hines is a graduate of Bunkie High, Louisiana-Lafayette (then Southwestern Louisiana Institute) and LSU Medical School (1959). He married his wife, Jackie, a Marksville native, in 1957, and they have six children, 20 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Hines' fundraising efforts for the orphanage have led to some heart-rending stories. One involves a 9-year-old girl, given the name Oneysi by staff members who were not allowed to know her real name because of a Guatemalan court order. She has a cleft palate and a club foot, and her father is in a Guatemalan prison.
"Her parents did not want her because of her medical conditions," said Hines, "and the court sent her to the orphanage. We started looking so solutions to get her the proper medical attention and our prayers were answered."
Lauren O'Brien Harris, a Bunkie High graduate who is a physician's assistant at a Shriners Hospital in Shreveport and took an interest in Hines' work with the orphanage, has arranged for Oneysi to have her club foot repaired in Shreveport after she has surgery to repair the cleft palate.
"With all the stories of Don and telemedicine," said Clark, who will conduct a non-denominational discussion about Casa Aleluya at the First Baptist Church in Bunkie at 6 p.m. on Sept. 13, "I could tell you the best is that because of Don, we have installed and taught technicians in other parts of Guatemala as well as both El Salvador and Honduras. Due to Don, we will reach all of Central America."
– by AP/ Reporter Bob Tompkins with The Town Talk
