![]() It lasts five years for an entire family. When patients test positive for anemia, they are given the Lucky Iron Fish, a fish-shaped iron piece activated in boiling water and then cooked in meals such as rice to enrich the food with iron. This year, the average anemia rates ranged from 20 to 25 percent, up to 35 percent. About 100 people were tested in each village. The group rode buses on dirt roads in the sweltering heat to a new village each day, set up the clinic, and spent the day offering their services, including anemia testing. Beerman recognized that Guatemalans might have iron deficiency because of their high-starch diets when she first started going on the trip seven years ago. They got up out of their chairs and hugged and thanked us.”Įdwards traveled to Ecuador in July to test anemia rates with Kathy Beerman, professor in the School of Biological Sciences. “We were literally pulling teeth with just topical, and they were awake. “They have so little but they are still just as happy, if not happier, overall,” Edwards says. It was Edwards’s first study abroad experience, and she says she was shocked by how kind and grateful everyone was. WSU junior Auni Edwards arrived in Zacapa as a biology major and, after interacting with Guatemalans, left with the realization that she wants to become a physician’s assistant to have more direct personal contact with patients. The program has been in Zacapa, the area with the most need, for 24 years. In 1990, HIM started sending university students as volunteers to make a larger impact. The next year, she brought 27 more children. Inspired, she brought home a little girl from Guatemala in 1983 to operate on her bilateral cleft palate. She had turned her pain into something really incredible,” Scheeringa-Parra says. She was doing this because the child she adopted a year prior had died due to a lack of timely medical attention. While in South Korea, she met a woman who was adopting six children with heart defects. Eventually, she was able to conceive one child. She had no idea how this would lead her to help hundreds of other children and eleven adopted children of her own. ![]() Her journey to creating this nonprofit was not a smooth one.Īfter suffering a fifth miscarriage, she adopted a little girl from South Korea. Scheeringa-Parra always had a heart for helping others and went to school to be a social worker. “This is so broad that you can bring your grandma down and she can rock babies in the nutrition center while we go do surgery.” What makes the program unique is that anyone at any age or ability can help change others’ lives, she says. The seniors come in on Wednesdays, and the orphanage children serve them meals, says HIM founder Karen Scheeringa-Parra. Students also visited the nearby nutrition center for malnourished children, orphanage, and senior center built by the HIM program. “There is nothing I can compare to being thrust into a situation where everybody around you speaks no English, and you have to communicate really refined instructions about their health,” Neuenschwander says. If anemic, runners would send them to Ana María Rodriguez-Vivaldi, associate professor of Spanish, who would give detailed advice. ![]() If patients had anemia or diabetes, runners would explain that, if diabetic, they needed to drink less soda and eat fewer sugary foods. The students all had varying levels of Spanish skills, and Neuenschwander says being a “runner” to direct people at the clinics required the most diverse set of Spanish words. They also tested people for anemia and diabetes, assisted in tooth extractions, distributed and gave instructions on pain pills, helped with speech and physical therapy, and constructed homes. ![]() They were assigned a new duty each day, such as checking people in, measuring height and weight, or drawing blood. “ was the perfect combination.”įor 12 years, students, primarily health sciences and Spanish majors, have traveled to Guatemala with HIM offering assistance to dentists, surgeons, and other specialists. “I had realized that I spent a lot of time engineering things that help people, but never really got an opportunity to work with those people,” says Neuenschwander, who just graduated with bachelor’s degrees in bioengineering and Spanish. Lars Neuenschwander, one of 35 Washington State University students on this year’s spring break volunteer trip with HIM, witnessed surgeries such as Vicente’s, and his dream to provide free medical services to less fortunate individuals around the world solidified into a concrete goal. Lars Neuenschwander (Photo Matt Winchell) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |