AdventHealth Supports Hospital in Ecuador as 11th Global Missions Partnership

AdventHealth’s Global Missions team and West Florida Division have signed a letter of intent for AdventHealth to partner with Clínica Adventista de Quito.

The letter of intent formalizes Clínica Adventista de Quito’s status as one of 11 footprints in AdventHealth’s Global Missions program, which establishes long-term relationships for resource and expertise sharing between AdventHealth and medical institutions around the world.

Clínica Adventista de Quito, the only Adventist medical institution in Quito, Ecuador, is an acute care hospital initially built 60 years ago on a more than 32,000-square-feet lot with minimal upgrades since its initial construction. The most recent upgrades consisted of the main operating room and patient rooms in 2020.

Through the pandemic, teams from Clínica Adventista de Quito and AdventHealth have continued to meet virtually to identify additional goals and projects for the hospital.

“Unfortunately, due to the rise in COVID-19 cases, travel to Ecuador has been postponed until further notice,” said Mike Schultz, president/CEO for AdventHealth’s West Florida Division. “But the leadership team in West Florida has continued to meet with the team in Ecuador over digital formats such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams about goals and opportunities at Clínica Adventista de Quito.”

Initially, the team in West Florida Division determined that personal protective equipment (PPE) was an area of opportunity AdventHealth could assist with and was instrumental in sending those supplies to the hospital. In the summer of 2021, the division also collected medical equipment from multiple campuses to send to Ecuador.

“Our goal was never to just flood money into the institution,” said Joey Rivera, assistant vice president of mission and ministry for the West Florida Division. “We wanted to start building relationships and identify areas that can make a lasting impact on the quality of care the hospital provides in Quito. In our meetings, we also identified a diagnostic imaging center as an opportunity for growth at the facility, in addition to the PPE we sent over.”

The next project will be to build the diagnostic imaging center, including a reception area, operating room, tomography, ultrasound and echocardiography equipment. AdventHealth will assist Clínica Adventista de Quito in raising funds to purchase equipment for the imaging center and make any additions needed to the building.

Clínica Adventista de Quito’s collaboration with AdventHealth will focus on other key growth areas like expanding the chaplaincy program, leadership development, operations, research, philanthropy and branding. Norca Huamalíes, MD, president of Clínica Adventista de Quito, had the following to say about the partnership between the two institutions:

“On behalf of myself and Pastor Giovany Izquierdo, president of the Ecuador Union of Seventh-day Adventists, we are very grateful for the intent for Ecuador to become another footprint in AdventHealth’s Global Missions program,” she said. “We look forward to working together to fulfill the mission in favor of the community here in Ecuador and for our hospital to be the basis for this work. We are grateful to be the recipient of the assistance AdventHealth can offer us, as they have always done with other institutions in other countries. May God bless those plans, projects and institutions and bless all of you.”

Trips to Ecuador were put on hold in 2021 due to the resurgence of COVID-19 cases. The Global Missions and West Florida teams plan to visit Clínica Adventista de Quito in 2022.