The next project came in 1990, when he bought six acres of land in Aibonito and helped establish the Hogar Divino Niño Jesús, an orphanage for about 30 children with HIV. More than 200 have lived there since it was founded. The oldest former resident will graduate next year from the University of Puerto Rico. Another one attends American University.
"None of them have died of the disease," said Dr. Sanchez, who is currently professor and chairman of the department of dermatology at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan. "Each one of them takes 1520 pills a day for the HIV."
In 1997, Dr. Sanchez bought another lot of land for $7,000 and established the Fondita Divino Niño Jesús, which is a soup kitchen and rehabilitation center for drug addicts and alcoholics. An architect at heart, he helped design the building. Next, he intends to build a home for the elderly. "Once it's in my mind, it will be done," he said. "This is no sacrifice; this is fun. People think it's a sacrifice, but not for me."
Dr. Sanchez, who received the 2005 Mayo Clinic Alumni Association Humanitarian Award, credits his mother and his aunt, who is a nun, for instilling in him the value of serving others. "The most important thing is to think of other people all the time and their needs," he said. "You don't need to do what I do. You can be a good human being by being helpful to your neighbor [and by loving] your mother, your wife, your son. The important thing is to care. Care about your patients, about your family. If you care, everything will be all right."
A Quest to Improve Global Health Care
In 1987, Dr. Edward J. O'Neil Jr. spent part of his fourth year of medical school working in Makiungu Hospital in Singida, Tanzania. Shaken by the poverty and suffering he saw, and stunned by the lack of basic medical care, he returned to the United States with an altered view of the world.
"I'd read about conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, but seeing it was so much more powerful than reading about it," said Dr. O'Neil, who is now an emergency medicine physician at Caritas-St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton, Mass. "For me, the most important aspect was being in the communities and working with these people, hearing their stories, and coming to understand that these weren't people who were somehow deserving of their fate as has been widely portrayed by some circles in the United States and other countries. These were caring, loving people, people of faith, people who would give you things just for caring for them. One poor farmer offered me a goat for caring for his burns. I know he didn't have much more."
The experience in Tanzania made it "clear to me that there was a very large disconnect in our world, something that became a quest for me to understand," he said.
In 1998, that quest led Dr. O'Neil to form Omni Med, a not-for-profit health organization with a mission to provide medical assistance in Third World countries (
"Most of what goes on is American physicians training local physicians and other health personnel," he said. "In Guyana, though, we submitted a grant proposal to start a cervical cancer prevention program for the country. They don't have one. Cervical cancer is the most common malignancy associated with HIV/AIDS. To me, that's the crystallization of what our program is about."
Dr. O'Neil donates 2030 hours a week and part of his annual income to Omni Med operations. He has worked 50%75% of a full-time emergency medicine physician's schedule since 1992. "I don't work full time; that's how I do it," he said.
Currently, he said, Omni Med's greatest limitation is resources. "We operate on about $15,000$20,000 per year," said Dr. O'Neil, who lists Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and Dr. Tom Dooley among his heroes. "But the goods and services that we put out are probably [worth] more like $350,000. We just don't have the organizational infrastructure to support doing much more."
Dr. O'Neil believes that every physician should have an opportunity to work in a developing country or in a poor setting in this country, whether it be through Omni Med or another program.
He's written two books in an effort to inspire physicians and other allied health providers: "A Practical Guide to Global Health Service" and "Awakening Hippocrates: A Primer on Health, Poverty, and Global Service," both published in 2006 by the American Medical Association. "I think physicians have very little understanding of the real power to make a difference that they have in our world," he said. "Any physician or nurse can get involved in this work and go abroad."