Public Health Brigade

Before our public health brigade officially began, we make the 3 hour rocky bus ride to Zuzurlar to meet the families we would be working with. On a normal day, the ride would be an hour and a half, but since the rock "bridge" we had to cross was flooded over and some of the rocks had been displaced by the rain, we had to forgo the short cut and learn to hold our pee.

Attempting to cross the river.

The community was quiet - minus the 2 little boys we came across shouting and throwing sharp rocks at each other with incredible precision. The community already had their own church and primary school (which consisted of 2 classrooms) and the Architecture Brigade was in the midst of building a secondary school. This was a huge deal because students that want to attend secondary school currently have to take the public bus for hours to reach Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Students usually are only able to make the trip once a week, and must study on their own the rest of the time.

Our first glimpse of the town of Zuzurlar.

Our projects in Zuzurlar consisted of building a latrine, stove, pila (essentially a large cement block that holds clean water), and cement floors for 2 houses. It was exciting meeting the 2 families - there were a lot of questions asked to get to know the families. What I liked most about the program is that we would be building the projects with the families. As opposed to swooping in with our American ideals and building something for someone else, we were working together with people we were getting to know to building something together.

We split up into 2 groups - one working at each home. My group worked on the home of Daniel and Nancy, newlyweds who had saved enough money to be able to move into a home of their own. The ot
her group worked with a couple with 4 children. During construction, Nancy would boil us organic coffee and Daniel, his little brother, and his brother's friend worked with us on their home.

Photo on left: Daniel and Nancy

Starting from the left with the girl with the green shirt and going clock-wise is Becca, Daniel's brother, Rachel, Vishan, Angelique, and Daniel mixing cement.

With the help of a couple of amazing and very patient masons we finished construction on day 3. The last day we were in the community consisted of the "despedida" or "farewell". We had lunch together and shared our thoughts about the last few days of construction. It was really exciting to see the finished products and that they worked!

Honduras Medical Brigade

There were 28 of us at the Tegucigalpa airport. 22 undergraduates (most of whom were pre-med), me (the lone grad student), one nurse, one registered nurse, one medical doctor, one opthamologist, and one pharmacist. And something like twenty-two 50lb black body bags of medications and medical supplies.

We took the 1.5 hour bus ride to where we would be staying, a place called Rapaco which just so happened to be the old summer home of a former Honduran president. No big deal.

Hammocks lined the compound at Rapaco.

We spent the first day settling in (28 people to one large room. Needless to say, not a whole lot of sleeping happened) and the next day packing medications with our Honduran pharmacist, Mirelle. We unpacked the 22 black body bags onto shelves organized into types of medications....kids antibiotics, adult cough and cold, derm, etc. We counted out 30 tablets of each medication into hundreds of small zip-lock bags, and repacked the organized meds back into suitcases. It was a long process but we put a little Honduran hip-hop on the CD player and got to work.

Paige and Christina sorting meds.

Our first day of the medical brigade was a little overwhelming. We arrived in the morning to the town of Hoya Grande to hundreds of people waiting in a single-file line standing in the light rain. Some held umbrellas, most didn't, but all stood patiently in line. All day long. With small children. Many without food and water. Most had trekked for hours to get to the small school/church that we turned into our make-shift medical clinic. If only patients at retail pharmacies would wait patiently. For 15 minutes.

The school where we set up the medical clinic.

Students were broken up into groups to work in triage, translate for our doctors, and work in the pharmacy. Naturally, 3 out of the 4 days I was in the pharmacy. It was interesting to see the medications that were prescribed over and over again. Every patient received albendazole to treat parasites and vitamins and most patients also received acetaminophen or ibuprofen. A lot of patients had skin fungi and we also gave out a lot of antibiotic suspensions for kids. Many patients needed natural tears because of the dry and sunburned eyes from working out in the fields all day. Very few patients had chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, or asthma.

Setting up the pharmacy in the community church with our Honduran pharmacist, Mirelle, on the far left. Our pharmacy consisted of plastic bags of medications organized into suitcases.

What was most surprising was the number of children young women already had at such a young age. A 20 year-old woman already had 4 kids. Another was 15 years-old, had an 8-month old daughter, and had just been told she was pregnant again. I wonder how that feels? To be 15 and told that you will be having another child...

Dr. Cederna's table with her student translator, Rikav.

I took a break from the pharmacy for one brigade day and went around shadowing different doctors. During my stint with citología, or gynecology, we saw a patient with a 2cm x 2cm lump in her left breast as well as a cervical polyp. It seemed like a lose-lose situation. If she manages to gather the money necessary to perform the biopsy to determine if she has breast cancer and it is cancer, she wouldn't be able to pay for treatment. According to the patient, what would be the point of learning it was cancer if she wouldn't be able to do anything about it?

As of now, we are communicating with Global Brigades to figure out how to fundraise for this patient to be able to get a biopsy and to treat her cancer if she does have it.

The view on the drive from Rapaco to Hoya Grande.

Most of the other patients had short-term problems that could be immediately treated. All in all, we saw 968 patients in 4 days.