In medicine, follow up is essential. One of the main reasons Camotan Clinic exists is because we saw the need for the poor people in this part of Guatemala to get ongoing care. Our presence in these mountains started in 2008 and we did annual trips every summer providing medical care. It was on these return trips that we noticed we were seeing the same people we had seen the year prior. And those patients had ongoing problems like diabetes, high blood pressure or seizures that needed to treated and followed up regularly and were not.
Camotan Clinic is open and staffed daily between our visiting teams from US. We see many patients in the clinic. However some cannot make it all the way down to see us. Usually it is financial: many people living far back in the mountains simply cannot afford to pay for a truck ride over treacherous dirt roads to be seen. So we go to them.
We know where patients are in the mountains who need chronic medications. We keep track of each remote village and which patients need follow up. Many do not have cell phones so we notify the village leader we will be back in a month or two to recheck on the patients.
Salome Betancourth, one of our clinic staff checks blood pressure on a patient in a remote village
A Camotan Clinic volunteer checks blood pressure on a patient who could not make it down to the clinic
We give patients several months of medications and will go back to these remote villages periodically to follow up on each patient
As we continue to grow, we are learning how to use village leaders, local health nurses to reach the patients most in need. Going to them is not always easy. But our dedication to long term health improvement in these mountains requires us to. It is because of those of you that continue to support this great work that we can do this. So thank you!
And thank you for reading!