wfn.org | Adventist University Students Rebuild Communities

["Christian B. Schäffler" <APD_Info_Schweiz@compuserve.com>]

March 5, 1999
Adventist Press Service (APD)
Christian B. Schaeffler, Editor-in-chief
Fax +41-61-261 61 18
APD@stanet.ch
CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland

U.S. Adventist University Students Rebuild Communities 

Collegedale, Tennessee, USA,  [ANN/APD] A group of 41 
students are spending their spring break holding medical 
clinics in hurricane-ravaged Nicaragua and the Dominican 
Republic during February 25 - March 8.  

For the fourth consecutive year, a group of Southern 
Adventist University (SAU) students will be joining 
volunteering doctors and nurses who still treat hundreds of 
people a day in local clinics.  Two groups have been 
designated, one for Nicaragua and one for the Dominican 
Republic. 

The clinics treat a variety of infections, malnutrition, STDs, 
and malaria.  Students also hold educational classes, 
teaching local community members basic health principles.  
Memorial Hospital in Tennessee and Bergen Bruswig, a 
Chattanooga medical supply company have both donated 
medicines and materials for these clinics.  

The student volunteers are part of a Frontier Mission class, 
a mission-based senior nursing class where students learn 
to suture, diagnose infections and diseases, and how to 
deliver babies in a mission setting.  

Another group of SAU students is spending their spring 
break rebuilding a church destroyed by hurricane Georges 
last September in the Dominican Republic.  The students 
are staying 12 days in La Romana, which is 110 kilometres 
from the Dominican Republic's capital city, Santo Domingo.  
Besides giving their time and energy to the church 
rebuilding project, students raised US$575 each to cover 
costs of their own expenses. 

Hurricane Georges hit the Dominican Republic in 
September, killing more than 500 and leaving 100,000 
people homeless.  In October, hurricane Mitch pummeled 
Nicaragua causing an estimated 10,000 deaths and more 
than US$5 billion in damage, according to the United 
Nations. [99/06/05]