Clinic Set-up

We arrived in El Corpus yesterday after a smooth 4 hour ride down south. The quaint, cobblestone town will serve as our home base for the remainder of our trip. After splitting up and meeting our five different host families, we ate dinner and regrouped to plan the following day´s activities. The mountainous views in this part of the country are picturesque and are a sight worth the trip down alone.

This morning, we piled into the back of a ¨chicken truck¨ around 7:30 and made the mountainous climb to our clinic in a tiny pueblo named Madrigales. For the rest of the morning, we set up exam rooms, divided supplies, and prepared the clinic for the patients we will see next week. Katie Paul and Helen Toma (MS1s) have been organizing our supplies all year and ran the show (seamlessly, I might add). We have four exam rooms, a pharmacy, and a sterilization center for speculums. We made note of remaining supplies we need, and closed up the clinic until we return next Monday.

Throughout the Spring, the first year students and public health trip leaders worked together to construct several public health talks (charlas) that will be given in each community. Our four talks include an introduction to the purpose of our organization, family planning, domestic violence, and life stages. Julia and Kendra, our two public health leaders, have done an incredible job pulling together all our presentation materials, and we all feel well-prepared for our community stays.

Tomorrow we head out in pairs to where we will spend three days presenting our public health charlas and recruiting women to come to our clinic. Everyone has a slightly different journey ahead of them - long bus rides, hikes, and even horseback riding.

We return to El Corpus Sunday. Due to the remoteness of some communities, we will not have Internet connection so please check back in four days for an update!

¡Bienvenidos! Arrival in Honduras

We have arrived in Tegucigalpa! 

Despite some curious looks and inquiries from the customs officials over our bag of 4000 'condones' and 160 pregnancy tests, our team and supplies made it through customs and out of the airport! The 13 students traveling from the US and 4 traveling from Guatemala arrived within thirty minutes of each other, and we traveled to together to our hotel. 

After getting settled in for the night, we planned our next day's activities over pizza and icebreakers. We also had the opportunity to listen to the (officially!) fourth year medical students recount their clinical encounters over the past year of hospital rounds. It was an awesome preview for the rising second second year students in the group!

Tomorrow morning, we leave for the southeastern part of the country. After lunch in Choluteca, we will continue on to El Corpus where we will eat dinner with our host families and continue reviewing our 'charlas' (public health talks) that will be given later in the week. 

Our group has had great energy since 4 am this morning, and we are grateful for rest and time for preparation after a long day of travel. 

Stay tuned for updates! 

Luggage, supplies, and Charles post-Honduran customs

View from our hotel in Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Less than a week to go!

Bags are almost packed, supplies are all acounted for, and extra Immodium has been purchased! Next Monday, June 30th, 17 (2 public health student leaders, 7 rising second year medical students, 8 rising fourth year students) of the 21 HHA team members will fly into Tegucigalpa, Honduras in the early afternoon. Our two resident doctors and two attendings will  meet us in-country at the end of the week. Some of our team members have gotten an early jump on travel and are currently brushing up on their Spanish skills in Guatemala.

After a night in the capital city, we will take a bus to El Corpus, near the city of Choluteca. There, we will begin setting up our clinic. The majority of the week will be spent in the surrounding communities giving public health presentations, or "charlas", to the women who will attend our clinic the following week. Our work takes place in the southeastern part of Honduras, near the border of Nicaragua.

We will have a team member documenting our daily activities and adventures, and will update the blog whenever we have internet access.

Stay tuned for pictures and stories, and wish us luck!

Spring Preparations for JULY 2014!

We are getting so excited for our trip -- which will take place starting June 30th!  Our fearless leaders trekked to El Corpus a few weeks ago to finalize logistics for the summer.  We will keep you posted as we get closer to our departure date, but please see below for ways you can help. 

DONATIONS FOR 2014 TRIP!

Thank you to all have supported us thus far!  We encourage all alumni and friends of HHA to please donate to our upcoming adventure this summer!  Below is the information on how to donate, both by mail and online.  Please also email us at hha.leader@gmail.com with your current address if you would like to receive our Christmas holiday newsletter each year, or if you would like to donate any medical supplies to the trip this year.

How You Can Help

Make an online donation at https://secure.dev.unc.edu/gift/  in 3 easy steps:

1) Click Search Funds

2) Type in Honduran Health Alliance and select Search

3) Click Give and enter donation amount

OR

By mailing a check made out to "Honduran Health Alliance" to:

Attn: Honduran Health Alliance
c/o Paula Shackelford
The Medical Foundation of North Carolina, Inc.
880 MLK Jr. Boulevard, CB#7565
Chapel Hill NC, 27514-2600

Results! Fiesta!

Zac and Rachel, our medical student leaders, returned to El Corpus on Thursday from Tegucigalpa with the pap smear results. We convened on Thursday night to go over the results and follow-up plans for women in each community. We had about 365 patients, about 270 whom received pap smears, and of those that received pap smears there were 28 abnormal findings that ranged the spectrum of severity.

Yesterday we traveled to our respective communities to give back results. One of the health promoters will organize all the women that had abnormal results to go to Ashonplafa in Choluteca, our local partner. At Ashonplafa the women will receive biopsies and be counseled on what treatment is necessary following the biopsy results. We will provide the transportation and biopsy fees as we have done in the past.

We all had a great time spending a final afternoon with our host families in community. It was so pleasant to be able to return to our communities to say goodbye after developing a relationship with them during the first week. The MS2s on the trip will have an opportunity to return to the same communities as MS4s and thus our goodbye was possibly more of a ‘see you later.’

After packing up the clinic and reviewing pap results Thursday and returning results on Friday, we only have one more day of work before returning to the states. We will meet this afternoon to have an evaluation of HHA. This is HHAs 10^th anniversary and thus we feel a particular responsibility to evaluate how our program has grown and how to effectively provide services in the future. Finally, we will have a fiesta to celebrate our hard work!

This trip would not have been possible without the generous donation of family members, friends, physicians, alumni, and the medical school. We are grateful to be part of such a legacy of UNC medical students and faculty that have gone before us. We are excited to pass the torch for those returning next year.

¡Hasta en los Estados Unidos!

Christina and her host family.

Typical homestay.

Des organizing clinic breakdown.

Amapala!

We just returned from a fun trip in Amapala, an island about an hour south of Choluteca. It was a much needed rest after an intense clinical week. It was a beautiful island. We had plenty of time to explore the downtown area, which was like walking through a time capsule lined with old, colorful buidlings. There was also a lovely beach lined by shacks that sold delicious seafood that was served at colorful tables situated next to a number of hammocks. We had a great time relaxing and spending time with one another.

Tonight we will evaluate our charlas and make changes for next year. Tomorrow we will take down clinic, inventory supplies, and go over pap smear results with the leaders. Friday we will return to communities to return results. Saturday we will have time for evaluation and tos ay goodbye to our host families in El Corpus.

We are glad to get back to work and finish the trip well. Thanks for your continued support. More to come. 

Top of the volcano.

Beach.