I will be partnering with CERT International on a medical and dental service rotation through isolated regions of the Amazon jungle and up into the Andes mountain range. A volunteer team of health providers annually rotate through the remote villages along the Madre de Dios River and up into the mountains. These villages have little to no access to healthcare. The team provides basic urgent care services, primary care measures, dental capability, and resources for continued care once our team leaves.
The villages we serve along the route are geographically isolated from health care. Many locations we travel to by boat. It is very difficult for these populations to access care, thus many have had little to no interaction with any type of provider. The annual trip serves as a stepping stone for these individuals to of course get acute care needs addressed, but also provide folks with public health education and an introduction to resources for accessing health care in the future.
CERT is currently able to send a team annually through the route to develop the patient physician relationships that are so important for developing public health measures and care routes in the future. The goal is to continue fostering those relationships while providing acute care for the villages we enter. We continue to work on connecting these villages with the larger Peruvian health care system.
During my two weeks in the Madre de Dios river basin and Andes mountains, our team was able to see 566 medical patients. These patients were living in remote villages with minimal to no access to medical care. The shouts of excitement at our boat pulling up to their village will not soon leave my memory. Our team consisted of myself (an FM doctor), a pediatrician, two nurses, an EMT, a pharmacist, an optical specialist, multiple translators, and several other support staff. Together, we saw 566 medical patients, provided 1514 prescriptions, and distributed 402 prescription glasses. Our support staff who live in Puerto Maldonado and Cusco were able to provide invaluable resources to patients to ensure continued care at local facilities for those who needed it. Each village we visited was home to a different indigenous peruvian tribe. These tribes are isolated from mainstream Peru and only accessible by boat. We camped overnight at clinic sites and then continued down the river to the next village. Villages have little contact with health care, if any. A large personal goal became to provide as much health education as possible, from simple hand hygiene measures to more complex discussions of pregnancy, blood pressure, vaccines and wound care. Patients were so eager to learn all they could. There was a large need for prenatal care and education around pregnancy/delivery. News of our ability to provide prenatal vitamins, butterfly ultrasound, blood pressure measurement, and urine analysis quickly spread. I soon had so many prenatal patients, we adopted a CenteringPregnancy approach and did group counseling in addition to individual testing. There was also immense need for wound care, parasite treatment/education, blood glucose analysis, and blood pressure management. Glasses were unheard of and patients were ecstatic to get access to reading/prescription glasses. We did have two patients requiring evacuation: an acute tib/fib fracture and sepsis with altered mental status. These emergent cases were able to be loaded onto our boat and taken five hours to the closest health care facility. It was an honor to work with the CERT team and these incredible patients. I plan to join another CERT team in this region next year. I am hopeful to add dental care and immunizations to our available services.
