Empowering women and their families receiving the best reproductive healthcare has always been at the center of Dr. Lantry’s work.
Despite an increasing global access to information, vast inequalities exist regarding access to and understanding of reproductive health.
From pregnancy to pap smears, reproductive healthcare comes with a long list of vulnerable, unpredictable and often life-changing decisions.
However, empowering women by ensuring they and their families receive the best reproductive healthcare has always been at the center of Dr. Lantry’s practice.
For over a decade, Dr. Lantry has extended her practice beyond U.S. boarders, helping women and their communities from Peru to Tanzania.
Volunteer Work In Peru
In 2007, Dr. Fisal Khan, a longtime personal friend and fellow surgeon, asked Dr. Lantry to participate in a volunteer medical mission to Ayacucho, Peru. The group needed an OB/GYN and Dr. Lantry immediately agreed.
Initially drawn by the opportunity to help, Dr. Lantry quickly realized the extent to which her experience as an OB/GYN could could benefit entire underserved communities.
Of course, Dr. Lantry is not alone in this mission of empowering women in these other parts of the world.
Organizations such as the Center For Reproductive Rights and the United Nations are battling for women and girls’ reproductive rights in countries like Peru where they are incredibly restrictive.
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Small Efforts Lead To Big Impacts
In a city with a catastrophically underfunded and understaffed hospital, something as simple as a box of ointments can change hundreds of lives.
As a single individual working around the clock, Dr. Lantry was able to see and treat thousands of patients, who otherwise would not have received care.
Back in the United States, patients have options. Gaps in the system are relatively small and most patients have access to the treatment they need.
However, in many places abroad, patients do not have a single option.
There is no doctor. There is no hospital. For these brief moments in time, Dr. Lantry can be there for these patients in need of care.
This experience also serves as a chance for Dr. Lantry to reset her personal system, a chance to get back to her core reasons for going into medicine.
“With all the paperwork, electronic medical records and insurance companies out of the picture, it is just me, an interpreter and the patient,” Dr. Lantry said, describing her medical missions abroad.
“These trips act like a chance to hit reset on my personal system, like resetting a thermostat, a reminder of why I got into medicine, to help people.”
Volunteer Work In Tanzania
Following this first trip to Peru, Dr. Lantry has made a point to take time off once a year to travel to underserved communities abroad, increasingly returning to Tanzania.
Aside from directly providing services and medicine to these communities, Dr. Lantry and her team will often teach local medical staff and community leaders about women’s reproductive health.
As reproductive health can often be a taboo subject, the information in these sessions can dramatically transform the safety and opportunities available to women in these communities.
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Returning year after year, Dr. Lantry has seen this information slowly bring about change in unexpected ways as each year more and more young women finish high school.
The bonds Dr. Lantry forms on these medical missions serve as a year-long reminder of how much impact even the smallest of interactions can have.
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If you enjoyed this blog piece and wish to show support for Dr. Lantry’s initiative, we invite you to help us spread awareness by sharing this story however you can – either on social media or by sending the link to those around you. Sometimes starting a conversation is all it takes.