Fiji
2024 Mission Date
A Surgery and Clinic team will service the Sigatoka region of Fiji November 14-24, 2024.
2025 Mission Dates
In 2025, BMI is planning for two trips to Fiji.
March 2025 will be a small, select surgical team to facilitate more difficult surgical cases that were identified in 2024.
November 2025 will be the annual trip for clinical and surgical teams.
Mission Trip Cost
Approximately $3000 from Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport
Please note that since you are making a tax-deductible donation, you need to write “Donation” on the memo section of your check.
*Subject to cost increases in international air, hotels, ground transportation, departure taxes, visa costs, and fuel surcharges.
Application & Documents
Please visit the Application page to review the list of required documents.
Itinerary
The BMI team departs Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and flies to LAX. From LAX the team flies to Nadi, Fiji, crossing the international date line (and losing a day) on the way. The team clears customs in Nadi, and then is transported to Sigatoka, Fiji, to the Outrigger on the Lagoon Hotel. This hotel has given 10 complimentary rooms to the BMI team over the past several years. The team checks into the hotel and then is transported to the Sigatoka General Hospital, where the team will work for the week.
The team sets up the clinic and surgery, and later that day and throughout the week, examines 100 or more of the Outrigger Resort employees as a token of appreciation for the complimentary rooms. The surgical team performs cataract surgery that afternoon. The team eats breakfast at the hotel each morning, lunch is served daily at the clinic/hospital, and evening meals at a variety of restaurants at the hotel and nearby town. From Monday through Friday noon, the clinic and surgical team will see about 700 patients in the clinic and perform around 80 eye surgeries.
The team then rests on Saturday and Sunday, leaving Sunday evening for the international airport in Nadi to take the overnight flight to LAX and the team members’ final destinations, arriving the same day as they left.
Background Info
From an association with Rev. Veramu Tora serving as a missionary in Belize and working with BMI team members there, BMI was invited to send eye teams to this South Pacific island, which at that time had only one ophthalmologist providing the country’s indigent eyecare.
For the first three years, beginning in 1995, the BMI teams worked in Viseisei Village using make shift buildings for our clinic. The teams had no proper facility in which to perform surgery. Then BMI was invited by Dr. Ernest Oo, chief of Ophthalmology for the Lautoka General Hospital, to use the hospital facilities. Dr. Oo is a dynamic ophthalmologist with retinal subspeciality training, who through his work with Lions International was able to build a first class eye department in the hospital, and was able to get the operating room fully equipped for eye surgery, as well as obtain lasers and fundus photography for treating the very high incidence of diabetes in the population.
Each year, BMI has sent a team to Fiji to help provide medical and surgical care for the underserved. Over the past three years, at the suggestion of the Fijian government, the BMI teams have been working in Sigatoka, where there was a large population essentially without eyecare. Over the years, BMI has donated an operating microscope, a lensometer, and a keratometer to the Sigatoka Hospital.
Some links to other sites about Fiji:
