06/06/2026
ROMANIA 2026
Our fantastic team of 3 US doctors, one Romanian doctor, 2 US nurses, one US preMed student and one spouse assistant held clinics in chapels, schools, homes in rural Tulcea county. We were supported by Mihai of Sprijin Fara Frontiere who provided student interpreters, coordination of clinics, lodging and masterful boatmanship though sometimes narrow and shallow canals in the Danube Delta.
On our first 3 days we traveled by boat to Letea, Periprava and Chilia Vecha.
Letea and Periprava have no health care providers but interestingly Letea has a clinic building newly constructed since our visit last year. Their population which rapidly declined after the fall of communism ,continues to decline with a mostly older population. The people were grateful for our medical consultation, diabetic and hypertension screening and opened their homes for lodging for us. Similar to prior years Valentin a local teacher was our coordinator, guide, transporter etc.
We returned to our base, Tulcea city, traveling by van to villages Mihai Bravu, Nicolae Balescu, Pecenaega.
As on previous trips to Romania and other parts of the world we saw many cases of undiagnosed diabetes and hypertension and unfortunately lots of known but uncontrolled diabetics and hypertensives. We seemed to see a few more villagers with very high BP and glucose than prior years. We did our best to urge these patients to get immediate local care/follow up as our personal resources re medications and other interventions is quite limited.
We were able to help a lot of folks with daily aches and pains, allergies, dermatitis with an adequate supply of OTC medications. We continued with education on healthy diets and other lifestyle modifications.
There are always cases with suspected cardiovascular issues, malignancy or other issues that require additional work up and we stressed the importance of getting local follow up and gave our recommendation as to what might be the next steps in evaluation.
We truly appreciate the support of our followers to make these trips possible. Our hope is we are helping prevent premature death or disability in these underserved communities.
