Carla van den Hout spent her life as a nurse. She hardly missed a day at work, even when the hours were long and hard. Now in her 80s, she’s still at it. She is planning her next medical mission trip to Honduras. And here in San Diego, she’s on the Disaster Medical Assistance team, which she joined several decades ago.
Van den Hout, who still has her license as a registered nurse, has gone on a dozen medical mission trips to Honduras over the past 14 years as a volunteer with nonprofit Health Caring Services to help folks get hip and knee surgeries they otherwise couldn’t get in their rural village. The patients pay what they can.
It takes Van den Hout two days of flying and driving to get to a rural area in Sula, Honduras, where a clinic is set up that supports Hospital Socorro de lo Alto (which means Hospital with Help from on High). Health Caring Services provides volunteer medical teams and donated supplies along with financial support. The nonprofit also runs a vacation Bible school and mountain ministry. The idea is to provide affordable health services and spiritual support.
Van den Hout typically works 10-12 hours a day for two weeks, regardless of the heat and humidity. The first patient usually comes at about 6:30 a.m. and the last one is done by 6 p.m. Van den Hout helps the doctors in pre-op and recovery.
Last January, when she was in Honduras, the 24-person orthopedic team she was on performed eight hip replacements, 28 knee replacements and two other surgeries repairing fractures over the two weeks they were there.
“Some people say I’m crazy to do this. Some people say I’m a saint, but I’m no saint, I just want to help where it is needed,” said Van den Hout, 83.
She recalled when the team helped a man whose leg had been severely injured in a motorcycle accident. “We put in a plate and screws and saved his leg. If we hadn’t been there, his leg would have been amputated,” Van den Hout said.
Friends ask how she copes with the stress. “Without prayers, I couldn’t go far,” Van den Hout said. “This is positive stress. The outcome is good and the people are so grateful when we come. The volunteers have a good time; there’s a lot of camaraderie.”
Van den Hout is one of the older members of the orthopedic team and is known as the “team mother.”
“Everyone loves her,” said fellow volunteer Jill Wilson, whose husband Dr. John Wilson, an orthopedic surgeon who practiced in Minneapolis, Minn., had started the orthopedic team in 2005. “She’s an example to the younger people on the team, some of whom are starting their medical careers. She shows that age doesn’t keep someone from answering the Lord’s call.”
Van den Hout got involved in the medical missions after meeting the Wilsons while she was on a group tour with them in India in 2012.
“The Wilsons, who volunteered at the hospital in Sula, happened to be sitting at a table across from me in a restaurant in New Delhi. They came over and asked me if I was a Christian because they saw me say grace before I ate. I told them it tastes better that way,” Van den Hout said. They asked if she’d like to join their medical mission team. She said, yes.
“I just want to share my abilities; it’s a challenge, but God always supplies what’s needed,” Van den Hout said.
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Van den Hout pays her own airfare, room and board and other expenses. Mira Mesa Presbyterian Church, which she attends, contributes to some of her travel costs.
“We love seeing how Carla is using her gifts from God, and the skills learned over a lifetime, on medical mission trips. It’s a privilege to support her and hear her stories of lives changed,” said the Rev. Duncan McColl, pastor of Mira Mesa Presbyterian Church.
Every now and then, someone hears about what she’s doing and sends some money to support the effort.
“I think caregiving has always been in my blood. My family was always doing stuff for others,” Van den Hout said.
During World War II, her family sheltered a Jewish family at her grandparents’ farm in Nazi-occupied Holland. They shared their food with neighbors during the lean war years.
It was that spirit of caring that inspired Van den Hout to become a nurse.
“I always wanted to be a nurse. I was always happy to go to work and I rarely missed a day,” said Van den Hout, who has a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
For much of her nursing career, Van den Hout worked in the intensive care unit at UC San Diego Health, including many years in the trauma center at the Hillcrest Medical Center. After 30 years working for UC San Diego Health in areas ranging from pulmonary to neurosurgery, she retired in 2006.
Van den Hout joined the San Diego Medical Assistance Team in 1993, two years after it was formed. She traveled to disaster sites across the country and sometimes around the world to lend a hand. She served as triage nurse after the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles. She helped out after 9/11 in New York and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and gave vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic in Milwaukee.
“She would do whatever was needed; she’d roll up her sleeves. She’s a really faithful, reliable team member,” said San Diego Disaster Medical Assistance Team commander Dr. Irving “Jake” Jacoby, professor of emergency medicine, emeritus, at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Jacoby founded the San Diego Disaster Medical Assistance Team team in 1991 as part of the National Disaster Medical System.
Now Van den Hout helps the team mainly by restocking emergency medical supply kits, discarding expired medications and resupplying them so the kits are ready for a disaster.
“I get a call and I come; why not? Everyday is a gift from God. This keeps me busy and I stay out of trouble,” Van den Hout said.
