For the past several years a group from North Park University in Chicago has come to Oaxaca each March to work in the area of health ministry. The project has been in partnership with the Covenant micro-finance non-profit called Fuentes Libres and the ministry of Dr. Cindy Hoover called Semillas de Salud. The participation of the group of (mostly) nursing and pre-med students has helped to advance the way these two ministries work together as they realize preventative health screenings with the groups of women that form the Fuentes Libres “banks”. This year the partnership expanded to include a group of local medical students and their professors and the near-by municipality of San Luis Beltrán and specifically the kindergarten and a church called El Remenente de Dios.
The main focus of this trip was to work with the local kindergarten of San Luis Beltrán to perform basic health screenings on the children. The parents brought their kids to the town square where they were checked on their height and weight, vision, and a simple blood test. Along the way there were some health related workshops put on by med students of the University of Oaxaca and at the end parent and child had a consultation with one of the doctors. The goal is to teach prevention and hopefully catch some early detection of health risks that can then be treated in the local health system.
A few pics of our time together and video one of the students put together
click here for the video: http://youtu.be/0dxs9B7Hs84
