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Published: April 5th 2009
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Today we went about an hour and a half north of the city to an area called Chalatenango. Dr. Iglesias' father came with us and he drove. It was probably one of the scariest car rides we've ever taken. We had to go up a mountain on twisty roads that were unpaved and only about 1.5 cars wide. More than once we had to slam the brakes as a car came in the opposite direction around a blind curve. To make it even better, the edge of the road which was a dropoff down the mountain was only protected by sticks in the ground held together by barbed wire, which probably wouldn't have done much to stop our SUV. Luckily Mr. Iglesias is a very skilled driver and very familiar with the area.
After our terrifying drive, we set up clinic in one of the buildings in the village and met Sonya who is a "health mother," which means that she has a high school diploma and training from the ministry of health and that she lives in the village. She is in charge of vaccinations, keeping tabs on the health of the people in the village, and of
coordinating transportation for those who need to go to the hospital for illness or childbirth, as very few of the people in the village have a car or motorcycle to transport them to town. She also provides educational talks on hygiene, disease prevention, and safety. She is a very important resource to the people of the village as most of them are uneducated and live in very rustic conditions, and their rural location makes health care access very difficult.
Today was the first day that we saw adult patients, and they proved to be more challenging than children. The children that we saw would mostly answer our questions with 2-3 words, whereas the adults answered in paragraphs, which made understanding them much more difficult. They also had more complicated medical histories which always makes a treatment plan more difficult. Dr. Iglesias also gave a talk to the women of the village about diarrhea, hygiene and how to use oral rehydration salts to treat it. The women were very involoved in the conversation and asked a lot of questions because Dr. Iglesias tells lots of jokes and makes them feel very comfortable.
After lunch, Katie and I thought that
we should use the bathroom before our long ride home, but we soon found out that we were very wrong in this assumption. Sonya took us to a shack outside of one of the houses in the village. Inside the shack was a swarm of flies and a piece of tin roofing covering a concrete hole in the ground. I wasn't brave enough to lift the tin roofing, but Katie did and she said it was awful. We both decided that we could hold it until we got back to our apartment with its nice indoor plumbing. We'll be keeping our fingers crossed that we never have tummy troubles on the days that we go to the villages
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