Barrio La
Quinta, Managua, Nicaragua. October
3, 2017. As a pre-medical student from the United States, when I think of
healthcare I automatically envision doctors, clinics, and hospitals. My
experiences over the past week however, have taught me that there is a whole
other side of healthcare that is just as important. The non-profit organization
Sustainable Sciences Institute (SSI) runs various community-based health
projects in Managua, one of them in Barrio La Quinta. Last week we visited La
Quinta for a day to learn about their public health projects and it was a
perfect example of this other type of healthcare: community based disease
prevention.
When our group arrived in Barrio La
Quinta, I was overwhelmed by how welcome I felt in their community. The SSI
volunteers had created a hand-made tapestry complete with each of our names to
welcome us. They also made a very conscious effort to get to know us
individually and to make us feel comfortable, which included our group and the
community health workers all playing the human knot together. After getting to
know each other a bit, they talked to us about the work they do in their
community. Currently their project mainly includes going house to house
inspecting homes for mosquito larvae, educating members of the community on how
to prevent these larvae from getting into their water sources, and sometimes
removing all the larvae from a home.
Something that instantly struck me
after getting to know some of the public health workers is that all of them
invest large amounts of their own time into this project purely for the welfare
of their community. They are not getting paid for this work, nor are they trying
to pad a resume with volunteer hours, but rather are simply passionate about
keeping their community healthy and safe from Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika.
The other aspect of the project that was very interesting to me was the emphasis
on prevention as a crucial aspect to healthcare. I think that too often,
especially in the United States, healthcare is presented as only curative when,
in reality, healthcare starts before a person even gets sick.
If preventative healthcare is
effective, it can not only reduce disease prevalence but lower the economic
burden on clinics and hospitals. Preventative healthcare is especially
important in communities such as La Quinta, where people do not have access to
the highest quality medical facilities and may not have the money to buy
expensive medications. Overall, I think that all of us, especially those who hope
to work in medical fields, can learn a lot from this experience and can
hopefully help emphasize the importance of prevention in our own communities as
well.
Playing the human knot with public health workers in Barrio La Quinta,
Managua, Nicaragua. Photo by Mauricio Lascano.
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