We are here in San Salvador to promote health, prevent disease, and even treat conditions of these poor people who don’t have money to pay for professional health care. We have an ophthalmologist, and several general practitioners, plus an orthopedic doctor here with our team of nurses. We do our clinics at a different site in the city of San Salvador (1.5 million people) every day. We leave the hotel at 8:30 each morning and return before 3:00 p.m. for lunch. Then we teach a health topic at the evening 7:00 p.m. meetings separately to the adults and children. This is a real delight.
When we arrive at the site of the clinic for that day, hundreds of patients are already there; some have waited since 6:00 a.m. One of the saddest things to me is that we have to turn some away at the end of the day and can’t say we will be back tomorrow. Triage is tough. You have to decide who will be seen and who won’t. Some only will see the nurse to get diabetes blood sugar testing and blood pressure readings and weight. Others we send on to the doctor if they have a condition that warrants it. But every one of the people gets seen by nurses and evaluated and taught.
Health teaching is one of the most important functions of the clinics. We teach them a better diet for prevention of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, etc. We teach lifestyle changes toward more exercise, fresh air, sunlight, and drinking water instead of the concentrated coffee they drink here. We teach them to cut down on refined foods and sugars and to eat whole grains with the germ and bran included. Soda pop (liquid candy), candy, and pastries contain refined sugars that lead to disease. These people listen and respond as we teach them individually just what they need to help their particular health problem.
One of the delights is to see these people who couldn’t afford glasses come out from the ophthalmologist’s clinic room with their new glasses. We try to tell some of them that the glasses are only for reading, but they wear them anyway…I think it is to show how good they look in them and that they really do have a pair of glasses! We brought thousands of pairs of glasses with us, the glasses having been donated by Lion’s Clubs in the United States.
I had no idea how much I would be relying on my translator both for the health talks and for the clinics. I finally found what to say to get their name and address and birthday. But the doctor wanted to know what they weighed when they were 17 years old. I wish I had had more time to learn my Spanish before leaving home! |
