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BasicHealth: El Salvador was started in by Dr. Miriam Cremer during a medical student rotation in Arcatao, El Salvador. She noticed that lay health workers in the community expressed concern that young women were dying of cervical cancer. In its first year, this screening program reached 87 people, but through education and community outreach, the program has since touched thousands of women and prevented an untold number of premature deaths.
Delegations were held in Jaunuary and August. In January, the delegation to Jucuaran served over 700 women for cervical cancer screening and over 900 patients for optometry care over 2-weeks. As requested by the community, outreach delegations were also conducted helping to serve more remote communities. Nine patients were identified with cervical pre-cancer and BasicHealth provided all with treatment. One patient was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and BasicHealth helped her to recieve chemotherapy and a radical mastectomy. Without the assistance of BasicHealth: El Salvador these patients would never have been diagnosed or recieved treatment.
The August delegation trained Salvadoran providers in cervical cancer screening using Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA) and immediate treatment with cryotherapy. Seven physicians and three nurses successful completed the training program. Over 500 patients were screened with all patients with pre-cancer receiving treatment. 100 patients with previous abnormal cytology received colposcopy and biopsy. This project will be used as a model for future training.
Delegation included 42 participants in to San Pedro Perúlapan, (14 physicians, 3 nurses, 10 undergraduates, 2 medical students, 1 optometrist, 1 ophthalmologist, 1 physician assistant, 1 focus group facilitator, 1 psychologist, 7 administrators, and 1 videographer). In 10 days, there were 2695 medical consultations including internal medicine, pediatrics and gynecology. In addition there were 1068 eye care visits and 905 pairs of eyeglasses were given away. Five women were identified with invasive cancer and pre-cancer. These women all have received follow-up treatment. Six research project were conducted that have led to multiple abstracts and publications.
 Delegation included 29 participants to San Sebastian (13 physicians, 1 nurse, 1 nurse assistant,10 undergraduates, 1 optometrist, and 3 administrators). Thousands of patient consults were completed and hundreds of pairs of eyeglasses were distributed.
Delegation to Arcatao. This was the first year undergraduate students participated in the project. Physicians and students provided gynecologic care, eye care, and general consults.
In Dr. Cremer returned to El Salvador each year for 4 weeks and worked initially on cervical cancer screening, helping hundreds of women. Quickly, she realized the dire need for other forms of basic health care. Many communities did not even have a full time physician. By 1999, Dr. Cremer began to bring a team of health workers to address this need.
The delegation saw thousands of patients including men, women and children. In , she presented the findings of her research at a conference of The Federation of Latin American Obstetrics and Gynecology, which won first prize for original research.
NEWSLINKS
“A Woman’s Worth,”
http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/hmm/04summer/awomansworth.html
Western Center for Law and Poverty Fair Shake Event
http://wclp.org/fairshake/
University of Wisconsin Publication
http://www.slh.wisc.edu/publications/results/winter00.pdf
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