6/8/10
Mid-June begins the rainy season in Honduras. For the last two nights we have experienced strong rain storms and for the last two days we have not had any running water at the house…there is no answer for this phenomenon except, this is Honduras. Without running water we have resorted to using the pila, or large cement water container outside the house. I am starting to get the hang of bucket showers which are quite refreshing after a day in the heat.
…Because of the heavy rain yesterday, I was unable to post for the day so here it is enjoy!
Today were heading to Yoro for the day to visit with Rita, the health director of Yoro, a city of 20,000 with a municipality of over 75,000 people. Punta Ocote is a municipality of Yoro and it is a 40 min drive to the larger city. Traveling through Honduras we are constantly surrounded by vast mountain ranges, somewhat like the Catskill mountain range but spanning the entire country. The topography of the land is so beautiful especially because so much remains either untouched or as farm land...even my brother Kenny would enjoy a drive through the country. While in Punta, we are having our laundry done by Jenny, one of our neighbors for 12 lps or about 60 cents. She does the laundry by hand, I plan on helping her next time should be pretty cool to help out. Once we got to Yoro we got a tour from the head nurse Mariana. After walking through the maternal ward and the small analysis lab, we met with the director of the hospital. We discussed the hospital and some of the problems that they have been experiencing. One of the biggest problems facing the hospital is that they have had a broken anesthesiology machine for 3 months. Because of this problem, they have had to suspend all surgeries requiring general anesthesia until a new machine can be acquired. Within the year, the hospital has had to deal with 3 low quality machines which continue to break in part due to the high humidity. Another problem that the hospital must deal with is a lack of specialists and the lack of accountability that the doctors have. At any given time the doctors can leave and there is no mechanism to regulate the doctors actions.
We then met with the director of the healthcare system in Yoro who gave us a general lesson on the structure of the Honduran health system. In Honduras there 18 regions, one of them being Yoro, which itself contains 3 cesamos or health centers. These cesamos are supposed to have both doctors and dentists for the community to access, however only one has a dentist. In Yoro there is no ambulance to the larger cities (San Pedro de Sula, El Progresso, or Tegucigalpa) in the case of an emergency. In the case of an emergency, the people here will either walk or take the bus which can take hours. The hospital also lacks a supply of correct medicines as well as an effective means of transport to get people to the hospital, like an ambulance…they are now using motorcycles to transport patients to the hospital. The hospital charges 5 lps per consultation but less than half can actually pay. I presented my walking group program and she seemed to really like the idea. She believes that one of the biggest problems will be the cultural machismo (or the attitude of the men) who may not want their women taking part in this activity. However, Punta is a little more open so the people there may be more receptive to the idea. We then visited one of the cesemos in Yoro and spoke with a nurse about how the facility operated…She also had a razor phone like many of the people here…sorry pops.
After a quick walk through Yoro we grabbed a bite to eat and I stopped at a local vender and bought some guineos (bananas). When we returned to Punta Ocote we quickly toured a hortiliza (vegetable farm) which required us to do some considerable hiking through the woods.
At night I wrote my presentation for the hypertension group (in Spanish) to be discussed during the hypertension group town meeting tomorrow afternoon, I think it will be very important, if it makes any sense haha. Time for bed as I fall asleep to rain drops on our metal roof, Adios.
6/9/10
This morning we woke up and headed to the clinic to help out for the day. On the way I stopped at the internet café to have my Walking Group presentation spell checked by Carmine, the café attendant. She took about 25 minutes to correct it so I guess I had a lot of mistakes J Afterwards I spent some time further explaining the program to Christina, one of the health promoters, who I asked to present the program to the community.
At the clinic David, Hannah, and I spent the morning unpacking medications and taking an inventory of all the medications of the clinic. After everything was neatly organized and accounted for we took a break for lunch and I took a nap :P This is the store room before we began to take an inventory...
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