Underserved Community Analysis

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Imagine being miles away from home in a country without your native language, without many technological advances, and where communities are plagued by otherwise avoidable diseases. This was my first impression of the small communities in Guatemala that I visited as part of a volunteer medical group. The lack of medical care, education, and resources put these village members into turmoil. Parasites, infections, and nutritional deficiencies needlessly took the lives of natives. Access to adequate healthcare and education could have easily prevented this situation.
Although these small, underserved communities received a large part of the treatment they needed through the volunteer medical team, much of the health distress could have been prevented with health education. Teaching the ways of preventative medicine was a large part of what I did as a volunteer, but coupled with tools such as consultation, pharmaceuticals, and compassion (an extremely large part of medicine which often gets …show more content…

I can still remember my first patient in detail although the event was over a year ago. A lady, just past childbearing age, had walked in and with the help of a translator I introduced myself and began taking her patient history. I asked when she had last visited a physician (it had been several years) and learned that she had walked 13 miles one way to get to our clinic. Hearing her answers to what many so often take for granted in the United States was heartbreaking. She described the gastrointestinal symptoms that prompted her to seek medical attention and we concluded that she had intestinal parasites. We prescribed medication and a treatment regimen for which she was so very grateful. Her problem was small compared to the pneumonia, progressive disease, and cancers that I saw during the rest of the work, but her story touched me so deeply. I knew then, without a doubt, that I wanted and needed to become a

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