Touching Base

Today was Guatemala/Honduras Day in the first Global Health Scholars Week celebration. In Ellen Clark Plaza, on the medical center campus, booths sold Latin American foods, crafts and jewelry.  A band filled the air with cumbia and banda music.

The centerpiece was an ambulance painted sky blue and yellow – the colors of the Guatemalan flag. The ambulance, or “ambulancia” in Spanish, will be headed to a hospital in Guatemala City, Guatemala’s capitol, donated by the Global Health Scholars.

Barnes-Jewish resident physicians in the Global Health Scholars program  recently returned from a trip to the Instituto de Cancerologia (INCAN), where they rounded with the surgical teams and worked in the clinics.

Guatemala is a country with beautiful lakes and active volcanos, national pride in its Mayan heritage, a thriving coffee industry and a rising literacy rate. Poverty, however, is still widespread, and access to healthcare is a major problem, say the Scholars.

 Scholar volunteers were shocked to see how this lack of access affected cancer patients. On a poster near the ambulance told this story from one of them: 

 ”The number of advanced cancers we saw at the Instituto de Cancerologia was astounding. Frequently, the patient had the mass for about a year before they sought medical attention, and then they went to a traditional healer or health care provider who did not identify it as a cancer, and treatment was delayed another year. Despite their cancer diagnosis, patients were so friendly and always had a smile for us. Patients come from around Guatemala to INCAN and many have to travel up to 10 hours to reach the city. Patients often cannot afford treatment and often have to go back to their homes without treatment. Patients who can afford it often have to wait up to six months for radiation treatments.”

Coincidentally, I heard a story about this lack of access about a month ago from my daughter, who spent the summer in Guatemala, in a small city on Lake Atitlan. One of the host families at the school she studied at was headed by a nurse practitioner. He worked at a nearby clinic where visits by a doctor were only sporadic. The nurse practitioner was used to be called at all hours of the day or night to deal with medical emergencies.

Pharmacists at the local drugstores dispensed antibiotics, many of which are over-the-counter, to people suffering from illnesses ranging from strep throat to common  diarrheal diseases.

But many of the townspeople bypassed modern medicine all together in favor of folk medicine healers.

My daughter witnessed a healing treatment given to a teenage girl who had injured her neck in a basketball game. The healer, an elderly Mayan woman, massaged the neck injury with a special tool carved out of stone. The girl cried in pain during the treatment, but when my daughter saw her the next day, she said she had no pain and full range of motion back.

My daughter theorized that the massage plus the placebo effect of having the “treatment” resulted in the girl feeling better. And that kind of folk treatment might work for a pulled neck muscle. But for cancer…..

In a effort to reach St. Louisans who are underserved or uninsured, the Global Health Scholars are having a free health fair from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. this Saturday, Sept. 24, at Ellen Clark Plaza, near the Central West End Metrolink stop on the medical center campus. Lots of screening, snacks, health information and fun are on hand.

-Kathryn Holleman