As the first week of Spring quarter comes to a close, it seems like long ago that we were sitting on the couch in our pajamas catching up on reruns of Glee or catching rays from the hot sun in Miami.
For a small group of individuals on the Global Medical Brigades, spring break took an international significance, though, as they headed south to Honduras.
The Global Medical Brigades at the University of Chicago is a chapter of Global Brigades, one of the largest student-led global health and sustainable development organizations. In addition to the Medical Brigades, there are several others such as dental, public health, and water brigades.
There are 97 communities within Honduras living at poverty level, and the Global Brigades seeks to care for the 20 communities with the worst living conditions.
The medical brigades recruit students, health professionals, physicians, and dentists in order to help support their mission. The Medical Brigades reach out to poverty-stricken areas within Honduras in order to provide local community members without health care or health insurance basic medical care and necessities.
Medicine is brought in suitcases on the airplanes taken to Honduras. It is necessary to get as many students to attend the missions, as more medicine can be flown over.The recent trip to Honduras spanned a period of three days and during those three days the students were able to set up and provide a clinic to one community called San Matias.
Bonnie Sheu, third year in the College, describes working with community members in Honduras.
“We were more familiar with the place and patients, and the community members helped to make the process easier,” she says, “in addition to allowing better control of medications and resources.”
The first day of the brigade was spent preparing and organizing the clinic and pharmacy with medicine in addition to orientation. The second day was spent administering patients.
In addition to the clinic and pharmacy, there were also several different stations for patients such as triage, where patients could get their vitals and blood pressure taken, as well as a dental station.
On the third day, they were able to visit another poverty-stricken community in Honduras, which was predominately populated with single moms and children. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to see 10 people living in one home.
“It was an eye-opening experience, we were able to understand what it’s like living there, and see the living conditions,” says Sheu of their visits.
One woman in particular made a lasting impression
“She was very rich, and yet she had nothing, it was very inspiring, she was very strong and good spirited,” says Sheu.
On the last day of the trip, the students of the brigade bonded over a bonfire and shared their experiences from the trip.
Many students felt the trip reinforced their desire to pursue medicine and that they learned a lot from the warm and friendly local staff.
The Global Brigades are in the process of working on new projects in order to better serve the communities of Honduras. One of the newer models is an electronic database to monitor common health problems of patients and the most needed medications within each community, allowing for better care of patients in each community. Along with the electronic database, the students are also working to provide public health lessons and preventative medicine, whether it be teaching children the proper way to brush their teeth or providing other lessons in basic hygiene.