VIOLENCE ALTERS HOW SHRINERS RUN CLINIC

JUAREZ -- Several hundred people used to flock to Hospital de la
Familia from all over Mexico for the opportunity to see one of the
U.S. doctors working at a two-day clinic that specializes in pediatric
orthopedics.

But concerns about the drug war violence in Juarez have caused the
clinic to require pre-approval before families travel to it for care.

On Friday, 160 children were invited by the Shriners Hospital for
Children to receive medical attention for dislocated hips, club feet,
scoliosis, missing limbs and hand deformities.

Kristine Ferguson, director of outpatient care coordination services,
said the new application process was created because the hospital's
board of directors is concerned that the violence in Juarez could
endanger the doctors and their patients.

The new process requires the parents of a potential candidate to mail
in an application describing their child's medical condition and needs
rather than receiving a visual medical assessment at the clinic in
Juarez. If an applicant is accepted into the program, his or her
parents will be notified by phone, she said.

Doctors will continue to see children who have already been accepted
into the orthopedic program. The new process does not affect them,
Ferguson said.

"We are not seeing fewer children. We are not going to take fewer
children," she said.

In fact, it could save families the expense of taking the long trek to
Juarez only to be rejected because their children don't meet the
program's criteria, she said.

But parents of children who have benefited from the clinic say the new
application process could pose a problem for those Mexican citizens
who can't read, can't write or don't have a phone.

Fernando Delgado, 42, said he and his wife, Rita Zubia, 40, are
concerned that people who don't have access to the applications will
miss out on the opportunity to receive free medical care for their
children.

Delgado, a Mexican citizen, said he plans to help the clinic by
distributing applications, helping people fill them out and allowing
them to use his phone if they don't have one of their own.

"There's a lot of people who are completely unaware of the program, so
our goal is to go into those small villages and inform people who
don't know anything about it," he said.

Delgado already takes time off of work to drive a bus, loaned to him
by his employer at Lecheria Zaragoza, to pick up children and their
parents from all over Chihuahua.

He said he does this because the clinic accepted his four children,
who are now ages 23, 22, 18, and 12, into the program. Before that, he
and his wife had to sell their house, and the children had to drop out
of school and repair Lecheria Zaragoza company vehicles to help pay
for their medical bills.

Delgado said the children all had cleft feet and one of his sons had a
medical condition so severe that he couldn't walk until after he was
accepted into the program.

"We received such a gift," he said. "This is our responsibility -- to
help the parents so that they don't go through what we went through."

Ferguson said the change in the application process won't derail the
clinic.

"This is a mission that we all want to continue, and it's very, very
important to us that we continue here," she said.

The quarterly clinic is made up of staff and volunteers from the
Shriners Hospital for Children in Salt Lake City, Utah. It has been a
fixture in the Juarez community for the past 25 years.

It will continue to function even if the number of doctors
participating in the program drops in response to the drug war,
Ferguson said.

"We're working with a few less doctors than normal because family
members have asked them not to come," she said.

FEMAP executive director Anna Aleman said she hopes the drug war
doesn't affect the amount of help U.S. outreach programs offer to
people in Juarez.

Aleman said her staff sets up a makeshift health clinic to accommodate
the doctors' visit to Hospital de la Familia.

"It's our sister city and we cannot abandon it," she
said.

Aleman said she hopes the modifications that have been made to the
application process will be in the best interest of everybody.

"You embrace the changes and you see the positive. Wherever there's a
hurdle, there's an opportunity for enhancing," she said.