CONCEPCION, HONDURAS — Rene Madrid was living in a small one-room shack, no larger than a single-car garage, with no water, no bathroom, no kitchen, no food and no hope. Madrid, who is 53 but looks much older, is a paraplegic. He fell, he said through an interpreter, “working on the side of a mountain.” Most likely, this was a result of working on a coffee farm, where the plants grow on steeply sloped mountains. Madrid lives in Concepcion, a village of just 83 in the Intibuca district of Honduras …Source: www.the-daily-record.com

SANTA ROSA de COPAN, HONDURAS — Even though a nurse promised her “no shots and no ouchies today,” Maria Francis was crying. She sat on her mother’s lap, repeatedly turning her face away from everyone trying to talk to her, to tell her how pretty she looked. And one hand — sometimes both — stayed clamped over her mouth. The 12-year-old was the first patient of the day to be seen by Columbus pediatric plastic surgeon Dr. Greg Pearson, who was working from a small exam room in a consultation building right behind Hospital de Occidente, the largest such public facility in western Honduras …Source: www.the-daily-record.com