Sensible traveler Destinations Where they went Travel gear Student travelMinistering to health
By Daine Daniel, Globe Correspondent, 11/03/02
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Sensible traveler Destinations Where they went Travel gear Student travel |
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For several years, Mithoefer, 33, a physician assistant at New England Medical Center, has known she wanted to participate in an overseas medical mission. But finding a group that matched her goals, skills, and time commitment was not easy. Finally, on one of many Internet searches, she came across the Rain Forest Health Project (www.rainfor
esthealth.org). A nonprofit organization based in Deer River, Minn., it provides humanitarian medical assistance to villages in the Peruvian Amazon that have requested it through the nation's minister of health. What Mithoefer especially appreciated was that doctors in the program educate people about health and hygiene, and, even more important to her, they incorporate traditional healing practices. In order to do that, expedition members learn about spiritual healing from a shaman and about medicinal properties of native plants from an ethnobiologist.
Because the other six Americans on her trip happened to be students, Mithoefer was able to see many more patients than if the group had included other physicians or PAs (who are licensed professionals who practice medicine as members of a team but are not medical doctors). "The students were so excited about learning and participating in everything," she said. "It made for a really good group." The 16-member expedition also included two Peruvian doctors, translators, river guides, and a cook. The trip cost the Americans about $2,300 each; the Peruvians were paid.
The party launched its wooden boat from Iquitos, a remote city in northeast Peru accessible only by water or air, and traveled down the tributaries of the Amazon.
Each day they would set up a clinic at a different village, usually in a one-room schoolhouse, and sometimes they treated people in their huts. The most common ailments were fungal and bacterial skin infections, urinary tract infections, upper respiratory problems, diet-related intestinal problems, and sexually transmitted diseases. "We saw a lot of families of five or six people, and each person had four or five different complaints," Mithoefer said, adding that most children had parasites caused by drinking from the Amazon.
"One of the main ways they treat parasites is they use papaya seeds, grinding them into a powder and ingesting it," she said. "Most villagers know about a lot of medicinal remedies. They can self-treat for a lot of things. But they realize their treatments are slower."
Each village has a "health promoter" who helps the villagers but isn't a trained physician. "We had three traveling with us to learn from us. We taught them how to suture and give injections and about Western medicine."
Her group didn't stay in the villages, but camped on small beaches along the river, Mithoefer said. The temperatures hovered around 90, "with 100 percent humidity."
After a full day of work, they and often some villagers would play soccer on the field that makes up every village center. They also swam daily, "and you could see these amazing pink dolphins while you were swimming. We were a very, very close group."
Mithoefer described the Peruvians as "warm and generous" and being in the Amazon as "incredible." "The jungle noises are there all the time. The birds, the tree frogs. . . . You're constantly aware that you're somewhere totally different. And the river is so majestic."
Going back to work in Boston was difficult, she said. "It's impossible to not notice how much money we spend on one person, and think how far-reaching the money could be, not only in Third World countries, but urban areas, too.
"There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about being in Peru, and I'm in touch with many people from the trip. It was a pretty profound experience," Mithoefer said. She hopes to repeat it in the spring.
Send suggestions to ddaniel@globe.com.