La Fundacion Rio Beni

The fundacion Rio Beni is an NGO that was started by Dr. Louis Netzer. I´m spending a little over a week here checking out there program. A friend of mine, spent two years here and loved it, so I had to check it out.

Monday, was my first day of work and I hung out in the clinic. The staff currently consists of Dr. Freida, the main doctora for the clinic, a Cuban doctor (who has yet to show up for work), Jose, the administrator, Modesto, the social worker, Lolita, the nurse, Antonio, the lab and pharmacy guy, and Maura, the health promoter. Patients begin arriving at 7:30am to buy their fichas to be seen and then the patients get split up between Dr. Freida and the other doctor. I started out with Dr. Freida to get a feel for their system, but since Dr. Cuban didn´t show up they asked me if I´d mind seeing patients on my own. So I did. It´s a lot easier than at the government health center, b/c since it´s an NGO I can sign prescriptions, my charts without any worries. Anyhow, it was pretty usual stuff...URIs, headache, UTI´s, etc. There were a couple cases that stood out. There was a gentleman that fell down and broke his wrist about 2 weeks ago. He had it wrapped up in an ACE bandage, but never got any other treatment. He came in b-c it was still pretty deformed and he had really limited movement of his hand and wrist. I sent him for an xray, which confirmed his fracture and partly healing....but the thing is there is no ortho here to send him to fix it back in place. And I just don´t have those skills. The nearest place he can go to see an Ortho is a 12 hour bus ride. So, he´s going to think about it or have a permanently screwed up wrist.

The other case that stood out to me was that a mom and child came in to be seen. The child had chicken pox, which isn´t crazy, but we just don´t ever see it in the states b-c of the varicella vaccine. But her mom was pregnant...but thankfully doesn´t have any symptoms of chickenpox. but she has a 6 month old and she really doesn´t want to have this baby. And well abortion is illegal in Bolivia so she really doesn´t have any options. This family was clearly poor, the children were not well nourished, and now she has to have another baby.

So our day isn´t all that hard, we see patients from 8:30am - 11:30am and then again at 2:30pm - 5pm. The afternoon is a lot quieter than the morning, people mostly come in for labs, follow up. So, that was day 1.

Today we tried to go out to the communities. It was raining pretty hard to today so when we got to the turn off for the community we were supposed to go to, we got told it was too dangerous to go. Instead we ended up going to a town another 45 minutes down the road and de-wormed all the kids at this school in an indigenous community (Chaman). I also saw a few kids that were sick with URI´s, pneumonia, and some skin infections. These families were really, really, poor. I´m glad we treated them, but continue to be convinced that these community visits don´t accomplish a whole lot. There does seem to be some continuity here so that´s good, but still.

On a lighter note, when we got to the community, there was a monkey playing with a dog. So cute!