Glen Dale Couple On a Mission

By ART LIMANN
GLEN DALE — Goiter removal, cleft lip repair and Lasik surgery are just a few of the services provided by Dr. Vic Chin of Glen Dale and other physicians who travel to the Phillipines each year to assist poor people living in that country.

Chin and his wife, Teresa, have been making annual mission trips back to their native Philippines since the early 1980s to provide needed medical care.

Dr. Chin has done thousands of major and minor surgeries since he started making his yearly trips in 1981.

His wife began joining him in 1983, after he was asked to volunteer his services to assist the poor who needed help while he was vacationing there.

After thinking about it, he organized his first mission trip through the Philippine government.

Since then, an average of about 30 doctors and nurses have gone on the missions each year with assistance from the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, the local Filipino-American Association of the Tri-State and the Filipino-American Doctors Association, a group of Filipino doctors from around the Mountain State.

In February, only15 doctors and nurses went to San Cruz, Laguna, with the Chins because the group had split up in order to go to two locations. Each participant pays their own expenses, most of which consist of travel costs.

Each missionary carries one bag of personal items and one bag of medical supplies. During their first week in the island nation, they treat between 4,000 and 5,000 patients, even performing needed surgeries. Four ophthalmologists who took part in the last trip did free Lasik surgery and lens implants using portable equipment they took with them.

The second week of the trip is for relaxation and vacation.

“It’s very tiring,” Vic Chin said. “But it is very rewarding.”

Teresa Chin added, “There are a lot of Philippine doctors in our area, and many of them have families they visit.

“It’s really very satisfying,” continued Teresa Chin, who speaks several Filipino dialects, organizes and teaches some health care classes. “It’s not just our mission. It’s everyone’s mission.”

“Here we have continuous care and preventive medicine,” Vic Chin added. “In the Philippines, they can’t afford that.”

He said the early trips served as training.

“We had to learn how to organize and make arrangement to make sure our supplies got through customs,” Vic Chin said, noting participants are now very careful about how they send needed medical supplies, medications and equipment to their destination in advance. Last year more than 30 boxes of medicines and medical equipment were sent prior to the missionaries’ arrival.

Chin said participants prefer to stay in one community for an entire week, but on a few occasions they have moved to more than one. He noted doctors can’t treat everyone who nees help in a community in one week.

“It’s sad,” he said. “You work a day or two and have to leave some untreated behind. It’s heartbreaking. They cry, and it’s very emotional.

“What I try to do in those cases is assure them the local doctors will take care of them, and we leave supplies and some money for them to treat them,” he said. “I try to make arrangements. There are not a lot of physicians in the country clinics, and they don’t have medicines and have antiquated equipment. I try to involve local doctors and develop a good rapport with them.

“I give them instructions because they need to do the follow-ups to the surgeries,” he added. “It makes them feel good. I try not to alienate them, make them feel important,” he continued.

Local volunteers help with screening and registration of patients who come to see the volunteers for treatment.

“They help to determine who really needs our services,” he added.

Teresa Chin invites anyone who would want to go along on next year’s mission to call them at 304-845-7045.

Doctors must make arrangements to have temporary licenses to practice in the country before they arrive.