Medical brigades in Copán Ruinas, Honduras: 17 years with Rotary Asheville

Every February, for more than seventeen years now, a group of doctors and dentists arrives in Copán Ruinas and sets up a clinic that runs for five straight days. The care is free. Anyone who shows up gets treated.

Across all those years, the brigade has served more than 15,000 patients, according to the Rotary Club of Asheville, North Carolina (District 7670), which organizes it together with the Rotary Club of Copán Ruinas.

How it started

The brigade was born around 2008 from the initiative of a group of Asheville Rotarians — among them Bob Haggard and doctors John Matheson, Winston Payne, and Joel Rosenberg — alongside a Copán Rotarian and former club president, who took charge of the Honduran side: liaison with the club, on-the-ground logistics, and hosting the visiting team.

That division of work hasn’t changed since, and it’s the reason the brigade keeps going: the visitors bring specialists and supplies; the club provides the groundwork, rallies the communities, and stands behind everything that happens before and after those five days.

What gets treated

The brigade has two core services:

Eyes. Vision exams and prescription glasses. The team travels with several hundred pairs — organizers report roughly seven hundred per trip — sorted by prescription, so they can be handed out on the spot.

Teeth. Cleanings, extractions, and fillings, using portable dental chairs that are set up and taken down each day.

There’s a third outcome, less visible and probably more important: early detection. Over the years, serious cases — melanomas, advanced glaucoma — have been identified in people who had no way to reach a specialist, and they left the brigade with a hospital referral in hand.

Inside the operation

The team flies into San Pedro Sula and drives about four hours to Copán Ruinas. The clinic is set up in town, and communities arrive on coordinated transport from the communities.

The pace is intense: during the busiest editions, around three hundred people a day have been treated, and some wait in line for hours. That last detail isn’t just color — it’s the most honest measure of how much this service is needed.

Some numbers from recent years:

• 2020: about 1,450 patients served and over 500 pairs of glasses distributed.
• 2026: more than 1,000 patients, with three ophthalmologists from the Asheville area, one American dentist, and seven Honduran dentists working together.

That last point deserves emphasis: the brigade is no longer just a visiting delegation each February — it’s a joint team where Honduran staff make up the majority on the dental side.

It’s not the only brigade of the year

The February brigade is the oldest and largest, but not the only one. The club has provided logistics for other health operations in Copán Ruinas — one of them, covered by La Prensa, served about 1,500 people in three days — and in recent years has worked with the CAMO Foundation and the local Health Center.

That more recent work is covered in this article.

Why this matters to a club of twenty-some members

A small Rotary club can’t fund seventeen years of brigades on its own. What it can do — and exactly what it does — is be the reliable counterpart that a club in another country needs to feel confident sending its doctors: someone who knows the communities, ensures the turnout, arranges transport, and is still there the following year.

That’s what turns a visit into a program.