Bienvenidos a Ecudaor! The time has flown by, and my wife Lauren and
I have had our share of hard work, new experiences, and excitement!
Anconcito, Ecuador
We are working with the Foundation for International Medical
Relief of Children (FIMRC) on a project to assess childhood malnutrition and
anemia in the rural fishing town of Anconcito.
There is a great deal of need in the community, with widespread poverty,
overcrowding, and limited access to healthcare being among its chief
problems. Some statistics: the majority
of families in Anconcito survive on $200 or less per month, and while the cost
of living is substantially less here than in the U.S., it is still hard to make
ends meet. For reference, the minimum wage here in Ecuador is $366 per month,
but since so much of Anconcito depends on the fishing industry, and some
times/seasons are profitable while others are not, families here are often
making far less than minimum wage.
Indeed, less than 6% of families make more than $400 per month!
Additionally, while diseases such as parasites and diarrhea
are common, often owing to contaminated tap water, there is little in the way
of medical care for the community. The
Ecuadorian Ministry of Health (MoH) runs a small clinic here in town where
people can receive free health care, but there are only three doctors for a
town of nearly 20,000 people, and, while private clinics do exist, the poverty
of the residents here makes cost a daunting obstacle to using these
services. The MoH clinic is
understandably overwhelmed with its impossible task of trying to provide care
to the town, so patients often must wait weeks or months to be seen. And even when they do get in for a visit, the
MoH clinic has so few resources at their disposal that the level of care
provided often falls well below what we would expect in the U.S. Cases of even low complexity must be referred
to a hospital in the nearby town of Salinas (I once saw a child with an earache
referred to a pediatrician in Salinas because the MoH clinic didn’t have an
otoscope to perform a proper ear exam).
I do not blame the doctors at the MoH clinic; they are good people doing
the very best that they can. The task before
them is simply far, far greater than the manpower and resources they have
available to them.
It is in this context
that my wife and I are conducting our research.
To our knowledge, there is very little data about malnutrition in this
community, so we are hoping to help fill that void of knowledge. Our study involves collecting height and
weight measurements of children aged 0-59 months, as well as collecting
hemoglobin samples from kids aged 6-59 months.
From these data, we will estimate the prevalence of manifestations of
malnutrition such as underweight or stunting, as well as estimate the
prevalence of anemia in the community.
We hope that our work
here will be much more than an academic exercise. We are collaborating with the MoH clinic to
conduct the study (they are very kindly lending us their hemoglobin analyzer to
perform our tests), and we will share the information we collect with the
doctors there so that they can hopefully follow up with the children most in
need of medical intervention. We also
hope that our results will be useful to FIMRC as they continue to work to
develop interventions to promote health and nutrition here in Anconcito.
But it hasn’t been all work and no play for Lauren and
me. We have taken advantage of our
weekends to do a little sight-seeing in this beautiful country. One of our trips took us hiking and
snorkeling at Isla de la Plata
(Sliver Island), also known as the “Poor Man’s Galapagos,” where we saw blue-footed
boobies, a whale, a shark, sea turtles, and a huge variety of fish. This past weekend, we visited the city of
Cuenca, a sprawling historical city surrounded by beautiful mountains. And this weekend, we hope to journey to
Riobamba and see the famous volcano, Chimborazo. Ecuador truly is a land of immense natural
beauty, and I wish we had more time to see it all!
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