St. Louis Doctors Work Against Pandemic Odds To Deliver Lifesaving Care Across The World

CBS St. Louis

March 06, 2021

A team of doctors from the St. Louis area is back home this morning after a whirl-wind medical mission trip to Africa. They were determined to return to the region of Ghana where they've been working for years, despite the pandemic. In the end, this trip was one that could change lives for decades to come. "We are currently in Ghana right now," said Dr. Jonathan Limpert during a Zoom interview. He was with his team at Mission:319 nearly 6,000 miles away from his home in St. Louis serving the community of Yendi, Ghana, where 300,000 people have only a single local doctor to care for them. This collective of St. Louis area doctors, nurses, and volunteers come here annually to perform desperately needed surgeries for things like hernias, thyroids, or obstetrics and they are training other healthcare workers there on the ground to cover the needs while they are away. RELATED: Local husband-wife doctor team turn tragedy into life-saving gift across the world But this year, the global pandemic threatened all of it.

"We were really concerned coming into the summer months that this trip wasn't going to happen," said Dr. Limpert.
This trip was key. They would be breaking ground on the emergency room - trauma center that they'd been promising the locals.
"This was a huge trip, a huge event for us," he said.
So they researched, planned, and prayed for months to find a way to get there.
"We took this very seriously," said Dr. Limpert. They worked closely with the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana Stephanie Sullivan to make it happen. "We really relied on her and her staff to kind of guide us and direct us in what was safe and what made sense.”
Every member of the medical team was vaccinated against COVID-19. As frontline workers they were some of the first in the U.S. to get the shots. Plus, they had several COVID-19 tests throughout their travels.