Huaral

I got hooked up with the Centro de Salud La Querencia in Huaral through the family medicine doctor I know in Lima. Huaral is a city of about 100,000 two hours north of Lima on the coast. It’s sort of a fertile valley in the middle of the desert. You have this beautiful ocean view on the way in and then there are farms mixed in with all this dust.

Huaral’s main industry is agriculture like much of Peru, but Huaral is particularly know for it’s productions of fruits: mangos, apples, passion fruit, mandarins, pears and Avocados. Plus there is a fair amount of pork and cattle farming/raising. This makes Huaral more well off than the other places I’ve visited on my trip and it has more access to services. But it is by no means wealthy. A farm worker makes on average 60 soles a month – less than 3 US dollars a week to support a family.

Because Huaral is not considered an area of extreme poverty, the SIS insurance is applied based on a sliding scale. A large percentage of the patients do qualify for the SIS program, but they must be evaluated to determine their eligibility. And there are a fair number of patients that pay out of pocket for their consulta. It’s not much – 6 soles (2 dollars), but these patients must pay for their meds and any other items necessary if they have a procedure done. I did notice that the pharmacy was better stocked – but not sure if that’s due to better management or b/c the clinic has more paying patients they can afford to buy a better stock of medications from MINSA.

La Querencia is led by Dra. Doraliz Campos. She is a general medical doctor that has been working in the area since 1996. She’s amazing. She’s been very committed to this area and she has had some serious impact on the area. Dra. Doraliz is consistently advocating for the community and particularly for improving the health center. It started out as a small clinic and now has grown to two floors with a lab, ultrasound, and physical therapy. This is the first time I’ve seen physical therapy at any MINSA health center. Dra. Doraliz says that they‘ve been able to make such progress b/c the community has supported the growth both financially and physically. She also makes it a priority for the health center staff to spend a lot of time out in the community doing health promotion charlas in people’s homes, schools, and work places.