Ancash: Working toward sustainability

Photo: My "home" office at the Lima airport awaiting a connection to Arequipa

Photo: 36-hours of sleep deprivation and counting; not good!

I have been in Peru for less than 18-hours and already I have had three meetings, worked remotely with the U.S. through the internet and gone to dinner with one of my favorite people in the whole world (Father Alex Busuttil). This is going to be a really busy trip.

Our team will be arriving in a couple of days. We are headed to the central highlands of Peru - an area known as the "Alps of Latin America." An area that is unmatched by the natural beauty that continually displays itself all around you. I am really excited to get back to Ancash - it has been a couple of years and I have been "longing" to reconnect with the people of the area and some of the early work we did in 2007.

For now though - there are three days between when the team arrives and tonight; and, there is an endless list of things to do. The HBI staff (Ben, Bob and Karen) will be arriving in Lima tonight and tomorrow. They will be joining me (I will be flying back to Lima tomorrow evening after a full day of meetings in Arequipa) and Daniel (our "go-to-guy" and barrister) for two days of slammed packed meetings, errands and frantic "get readies."

Once the team arrives we will be departing via a chartered bus for the 12-hour trip to the town of Yungay. Our first week of clinic and outreach will provide little to no access to the internet - so I hope to post a number of updates before we leave mid-day on Saturday.

The purpose of this trip is two-fold: To support Union Biblica in their on-going quest to develop a "brick and mortar" clinic at their Kusi Camp; we will be providing a small community clinic (pediatric, geriatric, general medicine, and dental) and survey those coming to the clinic about their experiences in gaining access to health and medical care in the area around the Union Biblica Kusi Camp.

In addition, we will be conducting a community assessment survey to 500 convenience sampled people from the various communities in the area to better understand their access to medical, dental and basic social assistance services. We will again be collaborating with the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and Dr. Kae Livsey on this very important research study.

For now - know that we will do our best to keep you informed about this Team Peru project; but our internet connectivity will be non-existent in Ancash. So I plan to load you with information in the next couple of days.

I better, however, get some sleep - as I have been up for almost 48-hours and I am really starting to feel the effects or cramped air travel and really bad airport food.

Thank you for all of your on-going support. Stay tuned to the Blog for updates on the Team Peru Ancash Adventure!