Medical Missionaries in Manassas focus on body and spirit in their work.
In a little corner of Manassas, trucks and trailers full of medical supplies and appliances arrive at the small office of the Medical Missionaries. Volunteers laugh and converse with the donors as they carry walkers, wheelchairs and boxes of medical supplies into the facility.
“We’re not a pretty place,” jokes Christine Madaio DeStasio, a volunteer and parishioner of All Saints Catholic Church in Manassas, “but we work hard, and everything has a purpose here.”
The nonprofit Medical Missionaries has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to alleviate poverty around the world, according to Dr. Gilbert Irwin, founder. As the nonprofit’s 25th anniversary approaches, Irwin and several volunteers reflect on the journey and accomplishments.
After being tapped by All Saints Church in 1997, Irwin led a medical team to the diocesan mission in Bánica, Dominican Republic, in October of that year to spend two weeks treating more than 3,000 adults and 2,500 children. Following this initial trip, Irwin founded the Medical Missionaries. In 1998, the team returned and treated Haitian patients who arrived in Bánica after crossing the river.
After 10 years of fundraising and building, the nonprofit’s first clinic opened in Bánica in 2007. Within the next few years, the nonprofit would build another clinic in Haiti.
“The world is such a mess, and we’re trying to make a difference,” Irwin said. “We’re not going to solve all of the problems that are out there, but we’re going to solve a few of them.”
Over the years, Medical Missionaries has sent a surgical team to Haiti and Bánica once or twice a year, caring for more than 100 patients per week. The medical and dental teams also traveled to villages in the mountains outside Banica where travel conditions and the great distances make it difficult to minister to roughly 25,000 people in the area.
Irwin described the severity of poverty in the region, recalling that when he asked a Haitian man if he feared death, the man responded no, saying, “What will I miss?”
While the Bánica and Haitian clinics serve a variety of needs, including trauma, hypertension, strokes and diabetes, many patients, especially children, suffer from malnutrition.
“There’s story after story that comes out of this,” said Irwin. “Every day you think you’re going to do something, then a variety of surprises comes, and you have to bend and weave.”
Irwin recalled how Dr. David Snyder and surgical nurse Sherry Pace saved the life of a man who arrived in a nearly fatal septic condition. After treatments and antibiotics, the man survived and went on to study law and eventually became the clinic administrator.
As one of the longest-serving team members, Pace has traveled to Haiti and Bánica two or three times a year since 2006. Due to a combination of COVID and political tensions, the surgical teams have been unable to return.
“Right now, I just miss being there,” said Pace, “because it was a big part of my life.”
All Saints parishioner Melanie Ebert likewise has served with Medical Missionaries for many years, including orchestrating fundraising efforts, publishing their newsletter and sorting the many donations the nonprofit receives daily.
After working at the Prince William Medical Center and holding a private practice for 44 years, Irwin converted his original office in Manassas into the nonprofit’s hub.
Every room of the original office now serves a different purpose, Madaio DeStasio explained, and nearly all are filled to the ceiling with donations, which are sorted and sent to the clinics, as well as to other nonprofits.
While Bánica is their largest mission, Irwin said, Medical Missionaries sends medical teams to nonprofits all over the world.
For their large storage needs, Medical Missionaries uses a nearby truck depot to store supplies in large storage containers. Over the years, volunteers have packed more than 200 containers by hand, which Medical Missionaries sends all over the world.
Over the past 25 years, Medical Missionaries received more than $3 million in financial aid from benefactors and totaled more than 1 million volunteer hours in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The nonprofit calculated that from the $3 million in aid, they generated nearly $225 million in value.
“Like everything, you start with something and things evolve in time,” Irwin said, “and you find one thing leads to another.”
Find out more
For more information or to donate, go to medicalmissionaries.org or their Facebook page at facebook.com/MedicalMissionaries/.
