Building Health Infrastructure with VHC Medical Brigade
VHC Partners With Communities
Building health infrastructure takes teamwork – especially when you’re working internationally. Since the Brigade’s founding, in 1999, we’ve worked with partners, hospital officials, and community leaders in Honduras to increase access to healthcare for the underserved and to build up capacity in the existing Honduran medical system. These partnerships have continued to grow over the years and the results are long-lasting as well!
Rural Clinic in Los Planes Community
In the Los Planes community, our organization built a solar-powered rural clinic in 2012 that is managed to this day by community leaders, volunteers, and healthcare professionals donating their time to the cause.
"Since I was young, I loved to be a helper. My dream was to become a teacher, but that never happened. Now with this [community health worker] program, I am able to be helping children, adults, and the elderly. This gives me satisfaction, life satisfaction. We run this clinic, and we can see the difference between when we started and now. When we kept working here, we started explaining ways to prevent common diseases because there were lots of those cases. Now the lessons we learned and then taught were taken up by the patients and families who are practicing these lessons with their children. Now we see so many fewer cases like those."
In speaking with the community health workers about diarrhea incidence levels, Olga shared more great news:
"After the water system was installed [built by VHCMB in 2015], we saw very few cases of diarrhea for a long time. But a couple of years ago, we started seeing more cases rise. We believed this was because of bad water, so we talked with the community water board [community volunteers who are responsible for maintaining clean water treatment through chlorination]. The community decided to change the leader of the water board, and then the children stopped getting diarrhea cases."
Olga's experience demonstrates the power of healthcare infrastructural development, community leadership, and volunteers taking action.
San Felipe Public Hospital
San Felipe Public Hospital, in Tegucigalpa, serves the country's lowest-income patients.
In San Felipe Public Hospital, the Brigade is working with the leadership of the Ophthalmology Residency Program to develop plans for a new medical-surgery center in a partner clinic in Comayagua.
While residents of Los Planes did not have any existing healthcare facilities in their community prior to the clinic built by the Brigade, in the case of Tegucigalpa, the public hospital has been overflowing with patients in urgent need of support! Families come to this hospital from near and far with severe requirements that local clinics can't meet. Because of limited healthcare resources, many specialized assessments or surgical procedures can take over 4 months to get an appointment if the services are even available. In thinking on the needs of families in Tegucigalpa, one Brigade member commented:
It hit me how difficult waiting months could be if you are in immediate need of help with pain, infection, or lost eyesight. I myself am just on the winning side of a battle with stage 3 cancer. I beat it, but only thanks to a rapid and robust medical response from a wide team of specialists. If I had to wait four months between appointments, it would likely have been the end of me."
All communities deserve high-quality medical care. From the remote mountains of Honduras to the cities, we’re working tirelessly to expand the reach and capabilities of already existing healthcare institutions while also developing clinics in underserved areas – and the needs are tremendous. Still, we have a capable team and a proven record of success – so we can’t wait for our next trip to Honduras!
If you’re interested in supporting health in Honduras or you’d like to volunteer with us, please be sure check out our current opportunities!