Here are some photos highlighting some of the chief activities of this summer--establishing the microbiology lab, organizing the clinic, and seeing patients.
I am not feeling so comfortable about the thought of riding up to Solola to check on the truck without a helmet. Luckily, I was too heavy to drive around so I ended up taking a chicken bus.
The clinic was absolutely in a state of disarray when we arrived
Initial cleaning and sorting at the clinic
Shelf construction by headlight!
Some of the completed shelves we constructed.
Another set of shelves which I built during an all-nighter the day before I departed the clinic.
An array of top-of-the-line medical donations, mounted on the wall of our nurse practitioner's office.
The ulcer on Dona Paulina's leg has completely healed!
Preparing an injection of antibiotics on a path in the village Pajomel for a woman with a large peritonsilar abscess. We were able to arrange for a truck to transport her to the hospital later that day--but it would have been an ideal case for the ambulance.
Domingo has had a sizable inguinal hernia for five years. The cost of surgery is more than he can afford, but it prevents him from working on the land he owns.
Adam Ackerman, my classmate in medical school, brought his years of laboratory expertise toward helping us establish or microbiology lab.
Teaching Eliza and Martita to do fecal occult blood tests, under the watchful eye of an ambercrombie and fitch shopping bag we converted into a poster.
Adam acquired a top of the line $2000 scope from the MGH Pathology lab where he used to work. Here, Nohemi is learning basic microscopy with wet mounts of stool samples and peripheral blood smears.
Here's an example of many red blood cells (donut shapes), one white blood cell (large with the purple nucleus) and several platelets (dark blue) on a slide of my blood. Peripheral blood smears like this can help diagnose a large variety of anemias and intracellular parasites like Malaria, among many others.
A gorgeous photo of a mysterious object we found in vast quantities in a sample of diarrhea. It turned out to be some sort of plant matter, but we thought we'd discovered a new pathogen.
Nohemi practicing drawing blood on me for practice tests in the lab. She ended up being a natural at phlebotomy.