Update on Ines

During the HBI Team Peru trip in July, the staff of HBI visited with Ines and her family to celebrate a special birthday. On 10 June, little Ines turned 5-years old.

This year has been a very important year for little Ines - she started school, began walking for the first time, and developed more and more independence from her family. During our short stay for her birthday celebration - we were able to watch Ines interact with her cousins and the children of the area. We could see that this shy little girl is starting to come out of her "shell" and really allow her personality to come forth.

Ines is attending a special school for children with high need medical diagnosis - started in part by the Anglican Church of Peru. She spends 5-days per week at the school with instruction in a variety of different realms. Her mother, Ms. Vicki, works at the school to help defer costs - and to stay in close proximity to her little "angel."

Ms. Vicki told us that Ines is really enjoying school. School is a very important milestone in her development - as previous attempts to get Ines enrolled in a preschool were unsuccessful; as school administrators continually told the family that they were concerned that Ines was "infectious" and could get the other children sick. The school run by the Church, allows a nurturing environment for Ines and her mother to really explore Ines' development and emotional maturation.

Ines is a very special part of HBI and we are so happy to be a part of this beautiful family.

The HBI Team at "work"

Part of the HBI Team (we are missing our team members from Peru, Wisconsin and Connecticut) at work at the staff office - with our "mascot" Oso.

Water, Water Everywhere . . .

Over seventy (70%) percent of the world’s surface is covered with water. Only about 3% of that water is potable (World Atlas Website). It seems that the planet has more than enough water to help everyone get his or her needs met. Yet, water filtration procedures are not readily available in developing nations. And some of the water filtration technologies are just too expensive for wide spread application.

In late 1999, the World Bank estimated that US$600 billion is required to repair and improve the world’s water delivery systems (UNCSD, 1999). The lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation is directly related to poverty; and, in many cases, to the inability of governments to support and economically finance satisfactory systems. The direct and indirect human costs of these shortcomings can only be seen in the tremendous impact to human lives and daily suffering - including widespread health problems, poor access to hygienic waste disposal, and limitations for economic development (Gleick, 1995). Improved water and sanitation facilities, on the other hand, bring valuable benefits for both social and economic development and poverty alleviation (WHO/UNICEF 2000).

In Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, nearly 1 billion people in rural areas have no access to improved water supplies. Equally, almost two-fifths of the world’s population (2.4 billion people) lacked access to improved sanitation facilities (waste disposal facilities). The majority of these individuals live in Asia and Africa. Sanitation coverage in rural areas is less than half that in urban locations, even though 80% of those lacking adequate sanitation (2 billion people) live in rural areas.

In 1994, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated the number of people without access to clean drinking water was nearly 1.3 billion. By 2000, over 1.2 billion people lacked access to clean, potable drinking water. In 2006 water borne diseases were estimated to cause 1.8 million deaths each year while about 1.1 billion people lacked proper drinking water (CDC, 2006).

Water, water everywhere – water, water none to spare. HBI is working to bring clean, potable water to areas of need. To learn more about the HBI Water Filtration Projects, please visit our website.

Maternal Health in Peru: More Needs to Be Done

By Stephanie Busari, CNN Repoprter (first appeared on-line at: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/09/peru.pregnant.mortality/index.html)

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Pregnant women in Peru are dying at scandalous rates, according to the author of an Amnesty International report into maternal mortality in the South American country. The report, "Fatal Flaws: Barriers to Maternal Health in Peru" found that hundreds of poor, rural and indigenous pregnant women are dying because they are being denied the same health services as other women in the country. It also concluded that the government's response to tackling the problem was inadequate.

Peruvian government figures state 185 in every 100,000 women die in child birth, but the United Nations says the number is much higher at 240, which makes it one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the Americas. In wealthy developed nations, only nine women die for every 100,000 births. The five main causes of pregnancy-related deaths in Peru are hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, infection, complications following abortion and obstructed birth, according to Peru's Ministry of Health figures.

Amnesty's Peru researcher Nuria Garcia said in a statement: "The rates of maternal mortality in Peru are scandalous. The fact that so many women are dying from preventable causes is a human rights violation. "The Peruvian state is simply ignoring its obligation to provide adequate maternal healthcare to all women, regardless of who they are and where they live." Garcia added: "Health services for pregnant women in Peru are like a lottery: if you are poor and indigenous, the chances are you will always lose."

The Amnesty report highlighted the case of Criselda, a 22-year-old indigenous woman from the country's Huancavelica Department, one of the poorest regions of the country. While seven months pregnant, she fell and hurt herself, and after feeling pains, she went to the health post for a check-up. The doctor said she was fine and sent her away but she miscarried two days later, according to the report.

The report found that so many women are dying because they face a number of barriers, including a lack of health staff who speak indigenous languages like Quechua -- a native Andean language spoken by some five million people in Peru. However, the vast majority of Peruvian doctors only speak Spanish, as they rarely come from areas or communities where indigenous languages are spoken. Criselda told researchers she believes the doctor may not have picked up her symptoms accurately because she could not understand her, and interpreters were not available.

Transport problems are also a contributing factor to the high mortality rate among Peruvian indigenous women, as most of them usually have to travel long distances to a health center to get attention, the report found. Criselda's husband Fortunato said in the report: "There is no ambulance when there is an emergency. To go from here it takes us two or three days and sometimes they die right here because there is no vehicle or ambulance."
According to the report, 27 percent of deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes occurred during pregnancy; 26 percent occurred during the birth itself; and 46 percent during the first six weeks after giving birth.

Amnesty has urged the Peruvian government to allocate resources to maternal mortality and reproductive health, prioritizing the regions with the highest mortality ratios. The organization also recommends an increase in training, particularly in indigenous languages.

Home Sweet Home

It does not matter how many times I make the trip home from Arequipa - 22-hours of travel is a long time. Most of the team is back in the U.S. by now - with a few team members continuing their adventures with excursion trips and sightseeing.

It was a fantastic trip and once we get all of the bags unpacked - we will post more photos and data from our outreach projects.

Thanks for all your continued support!

Goodbye Arequipa

THE TEAM IS HEADED HOME. So ends another great Team Peru outreach project. Our team members are headed off in various directions - Miami, Houston, Newark, Los Angeles, and Atlanta - to make their way home.

It was a fantastic trip and we are already gearing up for the Team Peru Ancash outreach project in October. Remember, if you are interested in joining the Team Peru group for our October project - please contact us at: info@HBInt.org

Touching Our Passions

Photo: Maria, a tireless crusader for the poor

Photo: Team Peru Arequipa (sans a few team members)

I spoke with a team member yesterday who had just returned from four hours of "home" visits with Maria - the social worker for the Mission of Alto Cayma. He was visibly moved. He spoke of the severe poverty he had witnessed. He spoke of the challenge that he faced when he was sitting across from a woman who lived with absolutely nothing in a one-room, 3-meter-by-3-meter stone hut.

He told me that he had looked around the room of this woman's home and felt a severe sadness. He told me of the simple items he noticed hanging from her walls - a backpack that advertised an American franchise, a hat that proclaimed the latest promotional project for a large U.S. cable T.V. company, and a filthy t-shirt that was obviously from a North American theme park. He wondered to me aloud if all of these items had been donated by a group similar to ours? He wondered if these "gifts" were the best that "we" had to offer.

I listened to my friend talk about his experience for a few minutes. I could sense that he was merely in need of a sounding board to process the emotions that he was feeling. I could sense that he was trying to come to terms with how he would respond to these new challenges in his life; and I knew at that moment that our work, the real reason that HBI takes teams to Peru, was having the impact that it was suppose to have. I knew that we were making a difference in the world because my young friend was faced with terribly poverty - and he was truly challenged by this experience.

Water Filter Unit is Complete

The water filter installation team proudly proclaimed this evening at dinner that there are "no leaks" in the system. This is great news - as we leave Arequipa at 5:50 pm on Tuesday!

There are a few last minute details to attend to - but by-in-large, this project is complete. The beauty of this new system is that it will go to provide potable water to a community of children living in an orphanage - an orphanage in a very poor community. The children, many of whom are wards of the Peruvian judicial system, will now have 24-hour-a-day access to clean, filtered water.

HBI is very grateful to Bob Palandech, Max Landon and Bishop Rich Monnie for their dedication in making this project a reality. A special thank you goes to Bishop Monnie for his tireless fundraising. Great job Team!

Moving at 100 MPH

Today was a very busy day. We had four different groups doing five different projects. Everyone - from the people helping to prepare food for the "Nutrition Program" (the program that delivers over 700 meals each day to people living in the extremest of the community poverty; the program is a "Meals on Wheels" model) to the people helping to construct a property wall around the volunteer house - arrived at lunch with glowing reports of their efforts.

This afternoon part of the group takes off for excursion trips to the Colca Valley and Machu Pichu, and part of the group starts the long trip home. It has been an amazing two weeks and the next couple of days are bound to go by in a whirlwind. I hope to post many photos of our work and our efforts in Lima and Arequipa over the next week. Stay tuned to the Blog Spot for daily updates.

Helping in a time of need

The Mission of Alto Cayma has been helping to bring food and clothing to over 700 families with "special needs." These families are literally living on less than $1.00 per day. They are the poorest of the Peruvian poor - and rely strongly on the advocacy and direct care from the Church and the work of the Mission.

One of the "special needs" families that we will be helping is in the form of remodeling a home. The home is in desperate need of a new floor and some simple upgrades to the modest area for cooking area.

As always - thank you so much for the support that you have given to the work of HBI. Please know that your donations are being well used.

Trip to Colca Canyon

Saturday brings with it a half-day of work and a plan for a majority of the team to take a 24-hour excursion trip to the Colca Canyon. The team will spend the morning split into activities; with most of the work focused on our construction related projects. At 1:30 pm a private van will pick up the 11-team members for a trip high into the Andes to one of the great wonders of the world.

Some of the team will be partcipating in the "Providers for the Underserved" meeting at Catholica University. In early 2009, HBI helped to start a focus group/club for medical students at Arequipa's prestigious Catholica University. The club provides an opportunity for students interested in working with poor and underserved communities to receive mentoring and support by faculty and outside facilitators who have dedicated their careers to working with undersered healthcare.

This morning, Dr. Bob Gehringer will be leading a group of 15 medical students (including 2 U.S. medical studnets placed in Alto Cayma by HBI) in a 5-hour training on basic CPR and pediatric approaches to CPR and advanced life-support. As the foundation of our working is helping to develop the next generation of providers and advocates for the underserved, HBI is excited to be a part of such an important project.

Water Filtration System

Our team has been really busy with the water filter unit placement at a local orphanage in Alto Cayma. They are hoping to be filtering potable water for the orphanage by departure time on Tuesday, 14 July.

Things are going GREAT!

Team Peru: Arequipa

The Team Peru crew is settled in to our new surroundings in Arequipa. This is a dramatic contrast to our previous week - where we suffered through cold showers and hectic days. In Arequipa, the team will be staying at the wonderful Casa de Margot Hotel and enjoying a schedule that is a lot less demanding.

Yesterday was our first full day of work with a number of different activities. We had a group working to complete the "re-assessment" phase of a previous community research project from 2008 (The PACE Study), a group working on the installation of a water filtration unit at an orphanage in Alto Cayma, a group helping with the daily operations of the Mission of Alto Cayma (working in the feeding program that delivers 650 meals each day to the most impoverished members of the community, making home visits with the Social Worker, helping with child care in the Day Care Center, and working in the "brick and mortar clinic") and a group working on a few special construction projects.

One project that HBI will be supporting, but due to time constraints unable to particpant directly with, is the remodeling of a "house" for a very impoverished family in Sector "11 de Mayo" in Alto Cayma. The family, a mother and her four children (the father left a long time ago), currently lives in a one room stone hut with no water, sewage disposal or electricity.

We will be working with Father Alex Busuttil and the Mission of Alto Cayma on a remodel of the home to include a small kitchen area, a concrete floor and an upgrade to the walls and roof to better protect the family from the cold winter nights of the southern Andes. In addition, the collaborative efforts of our two organizations will purchase beds for the family - as they are currently sleeping on mats on the floor.

Stay tuned to the HBI Blog for updates and photos of the remodel.

TEAM PERU: Week One

Team Peru – the end of week one. Wow, what an amazing campaign. With just over 5-days of clinic (we conducted a couple of impromptu clinics at night) we successfully provided medical, dental and opthmalogical care to just over 1000 patients.

What is particularly satisfying for the campaign this year is the number of Peruvian providers that joined our team and the “bridges” that we built to ensure follow care. This year our “Team Peru” group from North America was joined by 17 Peruvian physicians, dentists, nurses, and translators. It was a fantastic experience to have so many Peruvian participants.

Equally as important to the campaign this year was the “collaboration” that HBI entered into with the Clinical de Ojos Nahui to provide free surgeries to patients identified during the campaign with glaucoma, cataracts or operable ptyrigiums. Clinical Nahui agreed to waive their surgical charges and HBI is helping to provide the money to cover after care and medications.

A very generous donation from the Dunnellon Presbyterian Church in Dunnellon, Florida helped to make this after-care engagement possible. In addition to the surgeries, HBI will also be working to provide an after care “bridge” for children identified in the campaign with medical, dental or social care needs that require follow-up or longitudinal advocacy. HBI staff in Peru will be working with a number of different organizations and clinics to ensure that patients identified in the campaign requiring more advanced care – receive that care.

We arrived in Arequipa late this morning – and the team is really beat. It is amazing how much we have been on the go, go, go for the last week; and everyone is really feeling the strain of too many early mornings and very late nights.

Tonight – everyone will get as much rest as possible. The next week will be a different experience for the team – with a less frenetic pace. This week we will focus on completing a follow-up study on a cohort of pediatric patients identified in the Alto Cayma area as “underserved”, helping to install a water filtration unit in an orphanage, constructing a fence around the volunteer house at the Alto Cayma Mission, and delivering specialty healthcare services in the Alto Cayma Clinic through our volunteer acupuncturist and physical therapist.

We will be posting daily updates on our campaign and including photos of the team and our work. As always, thank you so much for your on-going support of HBI.

HBI and Univision Portland

HBI and Univision: With a base of operations for HBI in Portland, OR we are fortunate to a have a supportive Latin-American community. Our current ability to reach out to this burgeoning social structure has been at a snails pace thus far. However a few weeks back we received a fortuitous phone call from Roxy De la Torre el Rostro de Univision. Señorita de la Torre is the face of the nightly Latino news for the local Univision station. You may be familiar with the station as it is syndicated. You may have stopped on the channel to watch a minute of the constantly salsa dancing game shows or for the ever popular telenovelas, Spanish soap operas never lacking in machismo or melodrama. Srta. De la Torre contacted HBI for an interview as Univision Portland has a nightly segment called En Comunidad or In the Community. The gracious host’s connection with HBI is that she was born in Cusco, Peru and still has family living in Arequipa, Peru a city we spend several times a year in. She was excited to help make a Connection between our international outreach and the local Latino community. We saw this as an incredible opportunity to speak to a larger audience with a megaphone instead of a one on one conversation. A community we have yet to make a steadfast Connection with.

We prepared for the 3 minute segment ad nauseam with the expectation of time to discuss how the interview would play out, maybe an opportunity to have a second take, or read from a teleprompter. As is with our outreach trips we took a deep breath and uttered the words ‘be flexible’. Neither of us was overwhelmed by the studio lights, camera or action, yet somehow our gringo tongues were not nearly as silver as we expected. Nonetheless, post production of the piece faired on the gracious side, which if you would like to see, click on the link below. Follow the page half way down on the left side you will see a box labeled En Comunidad. On the right of the box you will find Health Bridges International, Inc.

We must give a great big thanks and abrazo to Señorita De la Torre for her effort and time. She is a social maven we hope to share a continued Connection with indefinitely.

Univision Link: http://kunptv.com/