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Serving Water in the Desert
And all under heat that spikes to 110 degrees in the heat of the world’s driest desert (less than a half-inch of rain per year).
The clinic’s team of 24 people from central Wisconsin served about 1,200 people over four days—and had to turn away hundreds more. No question why: Here in the lower-class community of Condevilla, affordable health care is as hard to come by as rain. Per capita gross income in Peru is $2,610 a year—about $50 a week—according to the World Bank Group.
Lucila Zegarra, 80, said a cheap appointment with a specialist in Lima costs 50 soles (about $16). Just getting that appointment often means waiting in line for a whole day. But even when Lucila has gotten an appointment, she sometimes has been told to come back in two weeks or a month.
“They’re so busy,” Lucila says. “There are so many people.”
Kind of like the clinic.
The rush gets so intense for the clinic’s five physicians that clinic leaders pull emergency room nurse Dan Texidor off triage duty and into a physician extender role—seeing patients like a doctor would. Even with consulting doctors working just a few feet away, Texidor gets stretched with complaints as diverse as acute respiratory distress and intestinal parasites.
“I’d like to help as many people as I can as quickly as possible,” says Texidor, 29. “The complaints seem easy to handle, but I don’t have the broad knowledge base I’d like to have to deal with some of these things—things like parasitology, pediatric medicine, adult chronic disease education.”
Texidor wasn’t the only one who found himself stretched. Among the non-medical personnel on the trip was aspiring missionary Steve Berg, who led worship at the team’s morning meetings and helped with triage and translating for patients.
“Coming into it, I was really excited because I didn’t have any medical experience, so it was a good chance to serve in ways I never had before,” says Berg, who picked up Spanish from school and from his parents, former missionaries to Mexico. “I learned some new things.”
The clinic was hosted by Iglesia Cristiana Esperanza Viva, a small church planted by Evangelical Free Church missionary Jim Panaggio two years ago. Panaggio says that while Condevilla may not be virgin territory for missionary work, it is hard territory—loud drinking parties are known to disrupt the church’s Sunday night worship. Consequently, the church’s primary goal in hosting the clinic wasn’t to see conversions but simply to show people that the church cares about them.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Panaggio says. “We are here for the long haul.”
People in and around the clinic got the message. On Day 1, a Monday, a crowd of about 100 people milling around the tent’s entrance looked at the team of unfamiliar faces with silent curiosity. But by the morning of Day 4, as team members lugged their storage bins into the tent, the people waiting in line applauded.
Church member Jose Bilca, who came to faith in Christ just three months ago, says people in line whom he talked to were telling him how touched they were by all that had happened during the clinic.
“They’re really surprised—more in a sense of ‘Wow!’—by the love they see in the team,” Bilca says.
No accident there.
“I love being here right now—it’s so neat,” former medical assistant Karen Landsverk says after taking a patient’s vital signs one day. “As tired as we all are and as much as I miss my family, there’s no place I’d rather be in the whole world.”
Water in the desert
Medical missions clinic jumps into tide of need in Peru
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTOS
LIMA, Peru—The sad-eyed man looks away as a needle plunges into his knee.
Medical missions clinic jumps into tide of need in Peru
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTOS
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Dan Deroche (left), a pastor at Woodlands Church in Plover, Wis., injects cortisone into a patient's knee under the guidance of orthopedic surgeon Doug Galuk.
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Milky white cortisone inches up the syringe. It will ease the needle’s sting – and the man’s chronic knee pain – in a matter of seconds. What won’t fade so quickly is the memory of this free medical clinic—in the minds of either clinic staff or the patients.
“There are a lot of people here who need it,” says Eulalia Jara Gonzalez, 36, holding a sandwich bag of free back-pain medication from the clinic’s pharmacy. “They should come whenever they can, because they’re going to be well-received here.”
The scene inside the one-time clinic’s open-air tent is half medical clinic, half carnival.
In one corner, ophthalmologist’s assistant Julie Breitzman and her husband, Joel, do eye tests and fit people with free glasses.
Across the central triage area, where a throng waits for evaluation, Julie’s boss, Dr. Steve Slezak, does surgery after surgery to remove pterygium tissue from patients’ eyes. Pterygium is a common problem among people whose eyes are exposed to a lot of dust and UV rays.
Slezak’s station is the first on “Doctors’ Row,” where a team of physicians treats patients of all stripes. Burn victims. Expectant mothers. Kids with chronic diarrhea.
“There are a lot of people here who need it,” says Eulalia Jara Gonzalez, 36, holding a sandwich bag of free back-pain medication from the clinic’s pharmacy. “They should come whenever they can, because they’re going to be well-received here.”
The scene inside the one-time clinic’s open-air tent is half medical clinic, half carnival.
In one corner, ophthalmologist’s assistant Julie Breitzman and her husband, Joel, do eye tests and fit people with free glasses.
Across the central triage area, where a throng waits for evaluation, Julie’s boss, Dr. Steve Slezak, does surgery after surgery to remove pterygium tissue from patients’ eyes. Pterygium is a common problem among people whose eyes are exposed to a lot of dust and UV rays.
Slezak’s station is the first on “Doctors’ Row,” where a team of physicians treats patients of all stripes. Burn victims. Expectant mothers. Kids with chronic diarrhea.
And all under heat that spikes to 110 degrees in the heat of the world’s driest desert (less than a half-inch of rain per year).
The clinic’s team of 24 people from central Wisconsin served about 1,200 people over four days—and had to turn away hundreds more. No question why: Here in the lower-class community of Condevilla, affordable health care is as hard to come by as rain. Per capita gross income in Peru is $2,610 a year—about $50 a week—according to the World Bank Group.
Lucila Zegarra, 80, said a cheap appointment with a specialist in Lima costs 50 soles (about $16). Just getting that appointment often means waiting in line for a whole day. But even when Lucila has gotten an appointment, she sometimes has been told to come back in two weeks or a month.
“They’re so busy,” Lucila says. “There are so many people.”
Kind of like the clinic.
The rush gets so intense for the clinic’s five physicians that clinic leaders pull emergency room nurse Dan Texidor off triage duty and into a physician extender role—seeing patients like a doctor would. Even with consulting doctors working just a few feet away, Texidor gets stretched with complaints as diverse as acute respiratory distress and intestinal parasites.
“I’d like to help as many people as I can as quickly as possible,” says Texidor, 29. “The complaints seem easy to handle, but I don’t have the broad knowledge base I’d like to have to deal with some of these things—things like parasitology, pediatric medicine, adult chronic disease education.”
Texidor wasn’t the only one who found himself stretched. Among the non-medical personnel on the trip was aspiring missionary Steve Berg, who led worship at the team’s morning meetings and helped with triage and translating for patients.
“Coming into it, I was really excited because I didn’t have any medical experience, so it was a good chance to serve in ways I never had before,” says Berg, who picked up Spanish from school and from his parents, former missionaries to Mexico. “I learned some new things.”
The clinic was hosted by Iglesia Cristiana Esperanza Viva, a small church planted by Evangelical Free Church missionary Jim Panaggio two years ago. Panaggio says that while Condevilla may not be virgin territory for missionary work, it is hard territory—loud drinking parties are known to disrupt the church’s Sunday night worship. Consequently, the church’s primary goal in hosting the clinic wasn’t to see conversions but simply to show people that the church cares about them.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Panaggio says. “We are here for the long haul.”
People in and around the clinic got the message. On Day 1, a Monday, a crowd of about 100 people milling around the tent’s entrance looked at the team of unfamiliar faces with silent curiosity. But by the morning of Day 4, as team members lugged their storage bins into the tent, the people waiting in line applauded.
Church member Jose Bilca, who came to faith in Christ just three months ago, says people in line whom he talked to were telling him how touched they were by all that had happened during the clinic.
“They’re really surprised—more in a sense of ‘Wow!’—by the love they see in the team,” Bilca says.
No accident there.
“I love being here right now—it’s so neat,” former medical assistant Karen Landsverk says after taking a patient’s vital signs one day. “As tired as we all are and as much as I miss my family, there’s no place I’d rather be in the whole world.”
© 2007 Called and Sent Magazine. All international rights reserved.