I can’t get online this morning here at the hotel. I called the front desk and the man said, “Sorry, the internet is down.”

Today is a big day. We’re meeting the First Lady of Honduras and an array of media, government, medical, education and church leaders in a gala celebration marking the launch of Operation Blessing’s nationwide anti-parasite campaign. I prefer to call these programs “worm busters,” but that name doesn’t translate into Spanish with gravitas sufficient to portray the program’s life-changing significance.

Today’s ceremony, to be held at the John F. Kennedy School in Tegucigalpa’s inner city, will involve 100 third and fourth grade students, but starting next week, the program will launch in far-flung areas ranging from the jungles of the mosquito coast to remote villages in the volcanic mountains.

Children infested with worms are always hungry (the parasites consume 25 percent of a child’s food intake), are often sick, miss lots of school and suffer in terrible ways ranging from non-stop belly aches to stunted growth, chronic disease and muddled minds. With a pill costing less than a nickel, and some very basic hygiene training-we can change all that.

Today marks the beginning of a new life for countless Honduran children… and the end of life for millions of intestinal parasites.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Bill Horan, Honduras, Latin America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.