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  Diego, Jo and Elena Santana
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.