March 2002

The story of the Barr Foundation's Honduras poster child, Douglas, is a remarkable one.

Douglas Issac Salgado was born in the poverty barrio of La Soledad of the Capital city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in February 1997 without the lower portions of his arms and legs.

Three and one half years later in 2001, reporters of the Miami Spanish Televison program, Primer Impacto, featured the young boys plight of crawling on the floor for the rest of his life. Honduran born Americans, Mr.Ismar Rubio and his wife Juana, who had lived for 45 years in the USA, saw the program and contacted our organization to help. The Barr Foundation is also based in South Florida and they became aware of our work from a local prosthetist.

Demonstrations of solidarity started surfacing for the boy; among them were: Airline tickets donated by American Airlines, the American Embassy issued visas for Douglas and his mother to come to Florida and receive prosthetic rehabilitation thru a sponsoring prosthetist, Kevin Garrison LPO who our organization worked with previously. Components were provided to our organization by the Barr Foundation's Hope Donor Members (see www.oandp.com/barr)

Mother and son were met at the Miami Airport by Mr.& Mrs. Rubio.

Subsequent medical exams and evaluations determined that the boy did not have any medical problems or conditions other than the fact that he did not have arms or legs.

Two months later, Douglas, his mother, whom had stayed at the Rubio's home in Pompano Beach, Florida, and the Rubios, returned to Honduras.

They were to be met by Douglas's father, family and friends whom anxiously awaited his arrival in the Diplomatic Suite at the Airport in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.

Little Douglas for the first time in front of his father's eyes, walked and embraced him as others applauded and cried. The Rubio's became The Barr Foundation's Ambassadors to Honduras and announced to the local media that our organization would be coming to Honduras in order to provide many Hondurans with hope and the opportunity for others like Douglas to become whole again.

The outcome was countrywide media coverage of Douglas's gift and news spread like wildfire through out the region about the Barr Foundation coming to Honduras.

Thus far, we have completed three successful trips to Honduras, joint ventured with the local Honduran Rotary Club, providing successful prosthetic rehabilitation to another 25 amputees. The most recent being the completion of the Tracer Cad Technology pilot program re: the computer scanning for US manufactured sockets for an additional 15 amputees.

Each trip, Douglas his mother and the Rubios met us at the San Felipe Hospital.

Douglas stays busy running around giving silent but visual inspirational encouragement to the many amputees waiting to be evaluated and fitted with our donations.

Because of Douglas's young age, he will require new fitting every 6-12 months. The Barr Foundation successfully enrolled him for all of his prosthetic needs, until he becomes 18 years of age, with Shiner's Children's Hospital in Tampa Florida.

Our organization works closely with Shriners exchanging of amputees requiring rehabilitation and whom have no other resources of funding.

We are finding that most amputees in this region of Central America have lost limbs above the knee to land mine explosions or vascular disease where the surgeons are tragically amputating people with diabetic ulcer toes, above the knee to avoid the possibility of subsequent operations!

Our recent trips and discussion with landmine removal personnel, revealed a concentration of over 200,000 active land mines planted on the southern borders of Honduras next to Nicaragua and the western border of Honduras bordering El Salvador.

There seems to be a high degree of casualties and limb loss from the southern Honduras regions of El Paraiso and Choluteca.

The Barr Foundation continues its work!