Deborah Bell
After co-founding Refuge International in 2003, Deborah traveled to Guatemala for Refuge International’s first medical mission trip. She continued to lead Refuge medical teams and clean-water teams for 15 years, handing off the leadership to others in 2018 because of health issues. But she knew there was more to be done.
When co-founding Madre y Niño, she recalled the first patient Refuge volunteers cared for. She was a pregnant woman who had been ready to deliver her baby for two weeks before the arrival of the first Refuge team (her water had broken). She had been to the national hospital daily and was turned away as there was no staff available to provide care. Deborah knew from that first patient experience that the care of pregnant women in Guatemala was inadequate.
And what about the children? On her first trip to the remote village of Sarstún Guatemala, she found children with big bellies, changes in their hair, sores on their legs, all the result of malnutrition. She asked herself why children who lived closer to her home than children in Washington, DC or Denver could be so malnourished and dying, and she determined to do something about it.