Posted on April 28, 2008 - by Frank

The CHE Programme - Tina Hernandez

The Community Health Evangelism programme is a joint effort between YWAM and Medical Ambassadors – designed to bring unity between our ministry to the physical and spiritual needs of the community. It is a community-based program where members of the community are equipped to evangelize, disciple, and share basic health care principles with their neighbors, friends, and families.

Los Encuentros, Guatemala – the first established programme location.

Three years ago, when I (Tina) was a student in the healthcare school, we ran a medical clinic in a village close to Los Encuentros in Gautemala. Dr Jacobo, previously of Medical Ambassadors, had already made connections starting the CHE programme. I remember hearing that this village wanted to build a school and have a clean water source. Three years later and with some help from Dr Jacobo and his contacts, but also with a huge amount of the communities own effort they now have achieved both those goals.

Initially turned down for funding from the Government for the school, because there was a school in the neighbouring village – even though the community had doubled - they put in effort to source funding from private areas. All the work on the school was done by the men of the village.

For the water project Dr Jacobo contacted a friend from the States who came down with a team over Thanksgiving holiday (2007) to install a solar powered water purification plant. It was the type used by US embassies in 3rd world countries. Men from the community had the ditches and ground work completed prior to the team arriving and a student engineer led the project. Alongside the water project we ran a week long medical outreach with the Healthcare school.

The next time we visited to continue with the healthcare teachings the Director of YWAM San Miguel Chicaj, Kathi, was gifted a chicken – as Dr Jacobo was not there to receive it personally.

As part of the ongoing CHE programme Dr Jacobo and the team from YWAM visit regularly to meet with the committee and give teachings on healthcare and discipleship, so that the people who are part of the committee and attend the training can educate their neighbours and friends.

We are hoping with time to start a CHE programme in Chicholom, Gautemala also. We first visited Chicholom for a medical clinic in 2005. There was a clinic building but no staff or medicines (which is quite common in the rural areas of Guatemala). Most houses here are made of mud brick, initially there were only seven water taps dispersed throughout the village and the only outhouse in the whole village was in the school.

When the new base was started in 2006 (only 1.5 hours away from Chicholom) we started fortnightly medical clinics and sent reports to the local healthcare centre which was responsible for the district Chicholom is in. Since we started, the healthcare centre now sends nurses alternate weeks to provide healthcare services and we were able to invite Milton (the son of Cerilo who is our contact in the village) to complete the dental training week with us so he would be able to provide this service on an ongoing basis. Cerilo has built his family an outhouse, and pipes now carry water to the majority of the houses.

Not all of those developments are related to our work but I believe that we have helped highlight the medical need of this village that was not known before, and now the appropriate service providers are taking responsibility.

By caring for the villagers and showing them how to care for themselves and their children it shows them their worth and allows them to focus on bettering their community without having so much sickness. Eventually when there is not as much demand for the medical service, which will hopefully happen with time, we will be able to start projects such as constructing latrines (out houses), to prevent some of the sicknesses in the first place.

I thought I would also tell about one of the young girls we have worked with - Angela from Chicholom.

When Angela passed through our clinic in Chicholom in 2005 she was about 7 years old and she was suffering from severe malnutrition, at times her feet and face swelled and her skin was flaking off which are signs of Kwarshiorkor, requiring hospital care. She was also highly irritable fighting with her brothers and sisters and constantly clinging to her father.

Here in the rural area of Guatemala it is not unusual that both parents do not have an education. There is a huge amount of fear and suspicion of larger towns/cities and even when families are informed that someone needs hospital care and we are prepared to finance the trip to the closest hospital they will often refuse, seeking instead the advice of local witch doctors which charge a large amount for their work. The really unfortunate thing is that if we are able to convince them (usually after at least a few hours or overnight) to go to the hospital they are often treated badly even shouted at by hospital workers because of their limited Spanish, limited knowledge and because they often arrive in a lot worse condition than the Dr would like because of the delay initially due to fear.

After counseling Angela’s family and encouraging them to take her to the hospital as their daughter was incredibly unwell, we gave them some education on how to feed her to prevent the condition worsening and prayed for her.

As we were coming to the end of our time in Chicholom we had to leave the matter with the family but a few weeks later we found out that the family had taken Angela to the hospital (she had a severe infection of intestinal worms) and she was doing well after being fed intravenously. The next time we went to see her she was a happy healthy smiling child – completely different to our initial impression.

What we also found out later was that prior to coming to our clinic the family had spent a lot of money on several visits to the witch doctor – with no good result. We were told that after Angela recovered her mother would tell anyone who would listen that the witch doctor was not able to help and it was the Hermanas Pobres (poor sisters – perhaps she though we were nuns) that had helped her daughter.

Pictures from Tina: