Meetings

I've spent a lot of time lately at meetings. It's good because I'm meeting people that are tackling health care issues from many different sides, but it's frustrating because I'd rather be out there doing work.

So this week I met with a Dr. Alex at the offices of Es Salud. Es Salud is the health care system for those that are formally employed. It's pretty decent coverage and well much more comprehensive than the MINSA system. Access to most technology, medicines, specialists, etc. The doctor I met with has been working on their special projects. They basically go out and do "campanas" (they love those here) in provincias, where they bring specialists, medicines, xrays and they treat anyone. Anyway, he wanted to here about the work we are trying to do here and gave me some ideas of areas that he thought would be good fits. He suggested Ica/Pisco because of it's proximity to Lima and also because it was devastated by an earthquake in 2007.

Then yesterday, I met with a lady from the NGO Yanapana Peru. Yanapana was started by this group that owns these luxury lodges on this super fancy Inca Trail. They are trying to be eco-friendly and trying to give back to the communities they work in by supporting them in different areas: education, agriculture, business development, and health. Last year they also did a "campana", but they brought doctors in from Lima and Cusco and took them through the trail visiting all these people, many who had never seen a doctor. Apparently, it went pretty well, but it was expensive and not sustainable. So, she thought we might be able to help. We're not so interested in the campana model, but if they decide to invest in a more long-term, sustainable model of health care, I'd love to explore this, especially since it would be serving a population that has very little access to care.

Then today, I went to an Es Salud hospital, El Hospital Almenara, apparently one of the biggest referral centers for Es Salud in Lima. There I met an ENT doc, Dr. Luis, who does some volunteer work en el cono sur de Lima. He works with a Catholic parish there that provides care to the poor and he thought we could be a good fit. So hopefully I'll get out there to see it.

Then I went off to Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicada (UPC) to meet with a doctor and professor who teach a class to medical students about evaluating community health needs. The university is relatively new, 15 years old, but the med school is really new, just 3 years old, but it's really well financed. It is definitely one of the nicest and most modern campuses I've seen. During their second year of med school the students learn how to do an assessment and then go out to one of the poorer communities of Lima and do the assessment. Since the med school is only 3 years old, they haven't been doing it long enough to develop programs around the health problems identified. Anyway, I'm going to try and go out with them when they go to do their evals and see what they do. The professors love the idea of an interchange between universities and are open to US med students coming to Peru.

So, like I said, really neat meeting this people, just wish I was more hands on...just part of the process. Just thinking that this Peru thing is going to take longer to get in place than the six months i'm here, but at least I've got lots of options.