
Diego, Jo and Elena Santana
“ La
Palmera” Health Centre
It was obvious from the very beginning of our work in the community
that one of the crucial problems amongst our neighbours was their
nutritional standard. It is not a mystery that poor countries suffer
a high degree of children malnourishment.
From the very beginning we sought to provide children a regular
source of nutrients. Firstly, we planned to provide a nutritious
meal to children coming or going to school before or after our
regular school reinforcement programmes. After the graduation from
the Nurses School of one of our young Bolivian church members,
we were able to start the upgrading of this programme and a new
plan to support the physical development of children with immunization,
deworming and vitamins.
Our nurse committed herself to provide basic health services to
our children and their families and eventually extended these services
in to the community by signing agreements with the local health
authorities to provide access to families to national health campaigns
promoting regular immunization and preventive health education
to parents and teachers in typical areas of need in third world
countries.
The Health Centre provides education in First Aid to our children
and regular seminar to their parents. It also supervises regularly
the children physical development by inviting local and foreign
medical doctors to do regular physical check ups and referring
to the local hospital emergency or specialized cases for further
attention.
Dental attention has been our most regular programme. We encourage
children to brush their teeth everyday after their meals at our
Centre and we have hosted for more than five years a Dental Team
from Minneapolis USA that has provided free dental care to our
children, their families and staff.
Today we have
a basically equipped Dental Surgery in our premises and one of
our former
community project girls is attending university
to qualify as a dental doctor in order to develop this service
amongst our beneficiaries, their families & community.
The potential
for the health Centre is even greater since Diego Santana, a
young medical doctor from the Canary Islands, has
been added to “La Palmera” CCC missionary
team. Currently, he is working in his professional registration
in the country, but he provides medical attention to our school
community under the authorization of the local Medical College.
But the potential of this young missionary doctor is to develop
the first Christian Medical Practice in town with a complete range
of services to meet the needs of a community usually deprived of
quality medical attention for lack of financial resources.
The Health Centre
activities includes looking after the School Nutritional programme,
supervising the quality of the diet developed for our school children,
as well as participating in the School Curricula by assisting in
the design of themes for Health and Sexual Education of Students
& Parents and lecturing in the classrooms.
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© 2003 CCC La Palmera
Casilla 235
Trinidad-Beni
Bolivia, S.A.
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