Cape Verde in the heart

The Clarós Foundation returns to the Atlantic archipelago to carry out its mission number 110

Pedro Clarós, full academician and vicepresident of the Governing Board of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), led the humanitarian mission that the Clarós Foundation, which he founded and presides, held in Cape Verde between the past 13 and 21 April with the support of the RAED. It’s the 110th mission of the Foundation and the eighth in this Atlantic archipelago, where the team led by the renowned otolaryngologist was last seen less than a year ago and where Clarós himself contracted a serious illness that hasn’t deterred him from returning to repeated occasions.

Eleven members of the Foundation joined the local staff of the Hospital Doctor Baptista de Sousa in Mindelo, on the Island of San Vicente; of the Hospital Doctor Agostinho Neto de Praia, on the Island of Santiago, and of the Hospital of Maio, on the Island of Maio, to perform 59 surgical operations. They were added 87 audiometries, 80 medical consultations for various pathologies and 20 hearing aid adaptations. All interventions were successful. The expedition was joined by the renowned surgeon Francesc Vidal-Barraquer, who until his retirement was head of service of angiology and vascular surgery at the Hospital del Mar and the Hospital de la Esperanza in Barcelona.

Established more than two decades ago, the Clarós Foundation has already carried out more than a hundred missions in twenty countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, where it has developed interventions on neck and face tumors, reconstructions of the face due to tropical injuries and diseases, and even amputations. Surgeries to which the beneficiaries didn’t have access. To these missions are added training scholarships granted to physicians from other countries, with stays in Barcelona for up to six months. The Clarós Foundation and the RAED signed a collaboration agreement that commits the Royal Academy to sponsor the Foundation’s solidarity actions and to join actively to the events held in Barcelona and other Spanish cities to publicize their work and obtain funding.