Our Indy GHO team enjoyed serving in the Santa Ana region of El Salvador March 9-16, 2013. We partnered with Iglesia Oasis de Vida and Iglesia Oasis de Gracia churches during our four days of primary care clinics. In total, we saw over 1000 patients and 69 received Christ as their personal Lord and Savior for the first time. Many others received needed medical care and rededicated their lives to Christ.
Our team consisted of 17 people from 16 different churches! Despite our diversity, we were a very unified team and were able to work well with the health professionals in Santa Ana. We learned about their health care system and the common medical conditions seen in the region from several of their physicians and an epidemiologist. They provided us with an orientation prior to our first clinic day which was extremely helpful and reviewed our clinic formulary. We learned that the majority of the people served in our clinics already had access to care, but were mainly in need of medication for chronic conditions. We were surprised to learn that many of the people knew their medical conditions and the names of the medications they were taking. The problem for many of them was the expense of medication and the high cost of living in El Salvador.
Indy GHO recruited a pharmacist for the trip, My Na Nguyen, who did a fantastic job coordinating this crucial part of the clinic. Medical students, nursing students, and others involved in logistics took turns rotating among the different stations (triage, eye glasses, clinic providers, pharmacy) to assist and/or learn. Dr. Kandice Franklin, MD and Dr. Andrew Koon, MD enjoyed teaching the medical students who joined us from Indiana University (Rikki Enzor and Michael Isaacs), Case Western Reserve University, and the William Carey School of Medicine. Not only were we able to provide for medical needs, but we were also able to meet the spiritual needs of our patients.
Pastors Mauricio Barrientos, Jaime Leon, and Jose Luis Barrientos provided tremendous leadership for their congregations who assisted with all the logistics and also provided translators for our team.They were a great example to us in their vibrant worship and dedication to serve their communities. As mentioned, the Oasis Medical Campaigns helped fill in the gaps for their needed medications and reduced the time it would take for them to be able to see a national physician.
We were also amazed at the young people (mainly students in the 11th grade) who served as our translators during our clinic days. Their English skills were exceptional and many were influenced by our visit to pursue medical careers. The future of El Salvador looks very bright with these very gifted students who are dedicated to serving the Lord!