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  • Title: Reaching remote areas in Latin America.
    Author: Jaimes R.
    Journal: Plan Parent Chall; 1994; (1):43-6. PubMed ID: 12345742.
    Abstract:
    Poor communities in remote and inaccessible areas tend to not only be cut off from family planning education and services, but they are also deprived of basic primary health care services. Efforts to bring family planning to such communities and populations should therefore be linked with other services. The author presents three examples of programs to bring effective family planning services to remote communities in Central and South America. Outside of the municipal center in the Tuxtlas region of Mexico, education and health levels are low and people live according to ancient customs. Ten years ago with the help of MEXFAM, the IPPF affiliate in Mexico, two social promoters established themselves in the town of Catemaco to develop a community program of family planning and health care offering education and prevention to improve the quality of people's lives. Through their health brigades taking health services to towns without an established health center, the program has influenced an estimated 100,000 people in 50 villages and towns. The program also has a clinic. In Guatemala, the Family Welfare Association (APROFAM) gave bicycles to 240 volunteer health care workers to facilitate their outreach work in rural areas. APROFAM since 1988 has operated an integrated program to treat intestinal parasites and promote family planning in San Lucas de Toliman, an Indian town close to Lake Atitlan. Providing health care to more than 10,000 people, the volunteer staff has covered the entire department of Solola, reaching each family in the area. Field educators travel on motorcycles through the rural areas of Guatemala coordinating with the health volunteers the distribution of contraceptives at the community level. The Integrated Project's Clinic was founded in 1992 and currently carries out pregnancy and Pap tests, as well as general lab tests. Finally, Puna is an island in the middle of the Gulf of Guayaquil, Ecuador. Women on the island typically have 10-14 pregnancies, families are extremely poor, and the population long had access to neither basic health services nor modern contraceptives and birth control. The Association for Ecuadorian Family Welfare (APROFE) realized the importance of finding some way to provide the residents of Puna with family planning, maternal and child health care, and primary health care. To that end, the organization built a fiberglass boat, installed modern equipment, and hired a doctor, nurse, and sociologist-educator trained in family planning and primary health care who now serve the population.
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