Health For All

Health care for the people of Nueva Vida

Nueva Vida is a resettlement community of about 1,200 families who were moved permanently to two cow pastures in 1998 as a response to Hurricane Mitch's flooding. It is part of Ciudad Sandino, a city of about 150,000 people with 80% unemployment and an annual tax base of $2.30/person. Health care is grossly inadequate.

Health care was slowly becoming privatized because of World Bank/IMF demands. What does this mean for people? It means that public doctors have no medicines or resources (including basics like sterilizing alcohol and gloves). Nicaraguans can't afford to buy their families needed medicines. If they are fortunate enough to be employed, one medical treatment may cost 1-4 days' worth of wages or more, which means no food for those same 1-4 days.

·        Infant mortality rate is 28.11% per 1,000 live births (World Fact Book [WFB])

·        The maternal mortality rate is 83 per 100,000 live births (UNICEF)

·        Out of every 1,000 children, 41 male and 35 female children will die every year.

·        The healthy life expectancy for a Nicaraguan woman is 63.1 years, and for a man it is only 59.7 years (World Health Organization [WHO]).

The total health expenditure per capita is $208/year (WHO), while the gross national income per capita is $910 per year (UNICEF 2007). That means that people who on average are making only $910/year must spend almost 23% of it in health services, if they can get any at all. You can see how health services are obviously lacking, and you can imagine how such mortality rates affect parents.

From 1998 to 2001, the CDCA hosted volunteer medical brigades and then opened a temporary clinic. In January 2001 we opened a permanent clinic providing medical exams, a people's pharmacy, and wound care.

Our medical exams are currently performed by two half-time doctors. We also provide low-cost lab tests with our half-time lab tech. We keep medical charts on over 11,000 patients, including an ever increasing file of chronic patients (suffering from hypertension, asthma, diabetes).

Our people's pharmacy fills the prescriptions written by our medical personnel for the patients. We give out tens of thousands of dollars worth of donated medicine and thousands of dollars of purchased medicine. [A current list of medications and equipment needed for the clinic is available here.] We are developing a Green Pharmacy to cut costs and to make health care a bit more sustainable.

Wound care is provided to anyone walking in. Keeping wounds clean is very difficult for a people who live and work in the dust and mud. We have a medic who treats emergency and on-going wounds. Some of the wounds our staff treat are over 20 years old!

We provide a part-time counselor for adults, children, couples, and families. She incorporates play therapy and group therapy when appropriate and available. She has organized a weekly group of women who share their own experiences, learn, and help other battered women help each other.

We have also just hired a dentist for a part-time dental clinic, as of August 2007. A dental clinic and a lab was what a 2006 survey of Nueva Vida showed as priorities for our clinic. We have been given an eye machine and anticipate it to be in use later on in 2007. We will need glasses to give to people.

Since 1994, the CDCA has increased access to health care in Nicaragua by:

• Building three rural health centers and remodeling one rural health center
• Hosting over 150 volunteer health brigades to treat thousands of patients in many areas of western Nicaragua as well as hosting dental brigades
• Providing health promoter trainings in six communities for three years, and facilitating ongoing training in Nueva Vida for the past six years.
• Creating family planning options for Nicaraguan families through funding the cost of sterilization and providing birth control. [An estimated 69% of women in Nicaragua use contraceptives (UNICEF), resulting in an annual population growth of 1.89% (WFB) with women averaging 4.4 children each.  Today, 36.4% of the Nicaraguan population is under the age of 15 (WFB)].
• Running a temporary health clinic in Nueva Vida for 1-1/2 years after Hurricane Mitch and building a permanent health clinic, which now has 8 paid staff and has expanded into a new building
• Maintaining charts on over 11,000 patients in the clinic, a rare practice in the area
• Providing on-going care for close to 100 chronically ill patients
• Distributing over $1 million worth of medicine through the People’s Pharmacy

Unfortunately, providing low-cost, quality health care is not sustainable. People living on $2.00 or even $1.00/day cannot provide for their own health care, it costs too much. A bottle of cough expectorant for someone with pneumonia costs $3.00! Now figure in the cost of seeing a doctor, antibiotics and a nebulization treatment and the choice becomes whether to get well or eat. The new Nicaraguan government that has come into office this year is trying to provide free health care but the damage to public health care is extensive and will take some time to undo… if it can be undone while international banks continue to clamor for privatization.

We do believe people need to contribute to their own health care; therefore, we require that people contribute a half day’s labor to the community OR a donation of 30 córdobas (which is about $1.50 U.S.). This donation covers their medical consult, any medicine prescribed that the clinic has in stock, and any follow-up visits that illness requires. Patients with chronic illnesses who do not follow-up on their on-going care are removed from the program.

In order to keep our clinic running, we need your support.

Will you help?

·         You can sponsor on-going care for chronic patients with no insurance.  We encourage folks who have a chronic condition themselves to sponsor a Nicaraguan with the same condition: if you are a diabetic then you can donate $50/month to help 1-2 diabetics here; if you have hypertension you donate $25 to help another person cope with hypertension.  You can arrange an automatic on-line donation every month if you desire. 

·         You can pledge to the on-going expenses of the clinic. $200.00 will pay for one-full day of operations including the dentist! Again you can do this on-line.

·         You can collect medicines and supplies for the people's pharmacy, glasses, dental supplies, and laboratory supplies. We are able to give more comprehensive care with donated medicines. This also applies to equipment as well. For further information, please contact us.