First Brigade to Peru!
In the summer of 2009 MEDLIFE organized its first ever medical brigade to Peru. The destination chosen was Cusco, Peru, near the ruins of Machu Pichu. The University of New England college of medicine expressed interest and a few short months later they had organized a medical brigade and were in Cusco!
The turn out was phenomenal for MEDLIFE’s first medical brigade to Peru, in two weeks the team saw over 1000 patients!
A member from that mission writes the following message.
"The extremes of deprived healthcare access can be summed up by one situation that our group of University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine students experienced in our 2 weeks in Cusco, Peru. A woman came into our mobile clinic with a Scotch-taped plastic bag on her abdomen. She had had a GI surgery for a twisted bowel that require the post-operative use of a colostomy bag. She’d long ran out of the replaceable bags that she was expected to clean and change. With peristalsis visible to all, she had a window open that was just waiting for an infection.
Despite this horrific image, our group of 21 students was able to make a difference for the largely indigenous population of the Quechua. We saw over 1,000 patients in our 2 weeks with the help of 2 brilliant doctors and 1 incredible dentist: Dr. Benjamin Mujica and Dr. Elvio Gamarra and Dr. Jacqueline Del Pezo; 3 medical professionals devoted to improving the health of their country’s poorest. The flowing hills of the outskirts of Cusco revealed communities of people with no easy access to doctors. They simply had to cope with the lack of potable water, sun exposure, and dust that were the main sources of their parasites, malnutrition/dehydration, and chronic headaches. By distributing a vitamins and medications we fixed the immediate problems, but we can only hope that there are more volunteers to come so that there will be continuation of care for these communities in need.
The group wants to extent a huge thank you to Alberto and Jorge (MEDLIFE staff) for all their work; we couldn’t have done it without you!"
