Que puedo hacer?

Goodbye bugs & drugs… hello Quito? I’m getting really antsy to start the Quito Project. Of course, there’s been a lot of preparation work here, but I’m ready to actually be there and see what it’s like for myself. Until then, I’m just musing about what we’ll find there. It seems like there have been a lot of relevant articles, t.v. shows, and conversations about the nature of medical relief trips recently. Are they really beneficial to the populations that they target, or are they just a way to practice quickie, ‘duffel’ bag medicine that doesn’t alleviate the underlying causes of health disparities? I don’t really know. It just seems that not being able to do everything isn’t an excuse to do nothing. Our supplies and facilities are limited. We’ll only be in the clinic for one month, and communication is going to be a bit of a barrier in spite of our medical Spanish lunches. However, it is at least an opportunity for an annual check up. We’re also working the most random connections to find Quito physicians. We’re hoping for a crash course on the Ecuadorian health care system & places to refer our patients if we can’t treat them. This is the part of the project that I hope really fans out. It would be a real transition from parachute medicine and actually providing consistent, continued care. I’ve heard that students at Northwestern started a similar project in Peru, and have trained local community members to sustain the clinic year-round. Maybe that can be a goal for Quito Project in a few years? The impact of the trip on the participants is also going to shape how we contribute to this project and other similar ones in the future. I'm not going in expecting to miraculously cure the neighborhood of everything. But, I do know that the trip is going to shape how I can contribute once I have more directly applicable skills & money. This will hopefully be the beginning of a continued pursuit to improve healthcare and a cultural introduction to Ecuador. For now, it’s back to the logistics of getting the rest of our participants down to Quito…