Our July 2018 trip featured a large medical group from Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Lancaster Bible Church) working up on the mountain during the week of 7/23-7/27. Each day, the large team of over 20 volunteers would see 150-250 patients up in the upper reaches of the mountains above the clinic.
Getting up to the remote villages alone takes 30-45 minutes drive from Camotan on very treacherous roads.
There are small government built school houses scattered in the mountains (K-5 is all the government provides) where we set up clinic and see patients. The villagers walk on foot paths, sometimes for hours just to be seen.
pre clinic meeting…
Once set up, we have providers and translators see each family. It is hot, challenging and tiring work. But by going to the remote reaches up on the mountain, we get to see more people in a day and get to develop relationships with each family. Those families then can find a ride down the mountain or walk to our clinic when they need care. We are starting to develop charts on these families which greatly enhances the quality of care we provide.
Additionally we met with the midwives who deliver babies on the mountain this trip. Above is a picture of our meeting.
We are in the process of developing an obstetrics program for these providers. Much more on this in a future blog as our September 2018 trip will serve to get this program started.
When the work day is done, we haul hundreds of pounds of unused medications — (whatever we did not give out that day) back on footpaths to the trucks as you can see below.
All the medicine that is not used on the mountain is of course left in the clinic for future use.
At night, we all have dinner together and then often in the city of Chiquimula where we stay, we find a soccer court that has lights and play soccer. It’s a great way to finish a hard day of work.
Thank you for reading!!!