Plans for the healthcare work

by Global Ministries | published on Oct 10, 2014

Dear Friends and Family,

The last couple of months have been very, very busy ones, filled with planning for the year, preparing for the arrival of work teams, hosting a work team from Maine, and continuing to visit villages and provide health care. We also continue to find occasional serious health care concerns and provide transportation and assistance in going to see medical specialists. Today we took Ashli, age 17 months, to the cardiologist to see what is causing her very loud heart murmur. We are awaiting the results.

Dear Friends and Family,

It is difficult to describe the health care system of Honduras. There are public hospitals where free or low cost health care is available, but they are of very poor quality, understaffed, under funded, and overrun with patients. There is a private system that is of fairly high quality with up-to date equipment, knowledgeable staff, and more adequate funding. This care is still very low cost by US standards (for example, lab work that in the US cost me $185, here costs $9), but is still out of reach for most people. In between these two systems there are brigadas, medical brigades from the United States, that visit haphazardly throughout Honduras. Here there is higher quality health care, available cheaply. The trick is to try to figure out when and where what type of brigade is coming. After only a very few months of working in health care, we have a date base of some 24 organizations that have brigades that we can call if we have a patient with needs. It is a time consuming and often frustrating process, often impossible for people with limited resources to access.

Once you have an appointment at a particular clinic, the usual procedure is to wait in a line, very early in the morning (5:30) in hopes of getting on the list to be seen by 2:00 pm. It is not unusual for a simple x-ray and lab test to take three to four days to obtain. Despite this, people do sometimes manage to get some level of health care.

Medications here are not regulated, so anyone can purchase medications in a pharmacy. Because of the difficulty in accessing a doctor, many people will self-medicate, using what worked for their neighbor or what worked for them in the past. “Green medicines”, natural products including teas, herbal remedies and roots, are often used. So, when people do seek a medical consult, it is often after having tried several other things first, and after a lengthy passage of time. Their problems are more serious, complicated and difficult to treat.
We have been trying to determine our place within this system. Over the last year we have worked with a number of children in the Nutrition Center. We have been frustrated that children who go to the villages after being in the Nutrition Center relapse rapidly, within six months, and are once again severely malnourished. We have talked with a number of different organizations in an attempt to come up with a more successful way of operating.

Our plan is to spend more time working in the villages with the mothers and children, giving chats and weighing the children monthly, and then visiting mothers in their homes to give them very concrete advice and suggestions for ways to improve the health and nutritional status of their families. For example, rather than just giving a lecture on how to build a latrine, we will help them locate where to safely build a latrine, and help them build it. There will be some kind of incentive program for making positive changes-we’re still working out the details of that. In addition, we hope to identify “mother guides” who will be resources to other mothers in the community and will lead support group meetings of mothers to help them with health and nutrition problems. These will be moms identified by other mothers in the community.

The Nutrition Center will be for the most severely malnourished children under age five, for children under two who are not gaining weight each month and for children that remain at any level of malnutrition, even slight levels, after we have worked in a village for six months. Our hope is to provide intensive education in a short time, along with healthy meals, and health care. We are selecting a limited number of villages, probably around 5 or 6, to work with for a period of at least two years. We are also working on the idea of beginning a program of microcredit so the moms can begin operating small businesses. This has been very successful in other areas in Honduras, including among poorly educated, very remote, very poor families. Our hope is to make a more lasting, permanent and sustainable change in the lives of the children.

Right now there are no children in the Center, but we will begin having children and moms again in March. We are training the new employee at the Center, writing more formalized policies, and looking for funding for food and medicines from various government and non-government organizations in Honduras. We are excited to begin to implement our plan. We have a group coming to work at the Center in March to help us construct a pescera, a fish pond, where we will raise talapia, a delicious fish, for use by the children. Later plans are to plant fruit trees to create an orchard, to plant vegetables, and beans, and to build chicken coops, and raise chickens for eggs. All will be located on the groups of the Nutrition Center to provide food for the children, and education for the moms about how to raise food.
Another part of our work with health care is teaching a class in the seminary called Health Care for the Local Pastor. The idea is to provide basic health information to pastors working in rural areas, so they can better assist members of their church and community to receive appropriate health care. We will be team teaching this class, and are very excited about this opportunity to reach many small villages.

That’s the news from Honduras. How are things with you all?

Que Dios les benidga,

Bruce and Linda Hanson,
Seth and Kesia Bruce and Linda Hanson are missionaries who serve with the Evangelical and Reformed Church of Honduras assigned to the Association of Evangelical Institutions of Honduras (AIEH). He serves in the health ministries as a nurse. Linda serves with her pastoral duties and also works as a physical therapist.