Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Just imagine you had a small baby with a cleft palate or hare lip but you were just too poor to do anything about it. Operations like this cost big money, as do the medications. If you live in the countryside, you would also not be able to afford going to the hospital, much less pay for lodgings, etc. This is the real situation of too many Peruvian parents.

But there is an answer. Some first-rate Peruvian and German surgeons will be doing such operations for free from October 25th through November 6th, in the San Jorge Clinic in Pisco, Peru.

It was early morning. The house was quiet. Rosa, the eighty-six year old mother of my wife, was doing what she loves, puttering in the kitchen.

Falcon, our Old English Sheepdog, was stretched out on the kitchen floor, enjoying his early morning nap. He is a big dog and takes up a lot of space.

Rosa, her mind on her tasks, turned, and forgetting about Falcon, tripped on his outstretched form. Falling, she turned her body and landed squarely on her left shoulder.  She laid there for a bit, stunned. Then she tried to get up, but she couldn’t.

by
Patricia Smith

Many people take advantage of the Peruvian cost of dentistry. They insist that including the cost of the flight to Peru, their dental work ends up costing much less than in the states. However, beware, and be smart when selecting a dentist for your family.

by
Patricia Smith
 
We’ve done it! We’re finally settled in Lima: kids are in a good school, learning Spanish like little peruanitas/peruanitos, the maid finally learned how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Kraft macaroni and cheese without bright orange clumps, and now, …uh-oh!! The little one has this awful cough that you’ve never heard before….

by
Ryan Maves, M.D.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Every year, between 5-15% of the world’s population is infected with the influenza virus. These infections usually cause a typical upper respiratory illness, one of many lumped together as the “common cold,” but in a significant minority of cases, more severe disease and even death may result. Much of this illness occurs in the background; individual people may die of pneumonia, heart attacks, or some other common cause, but their sickness was the result of an initial influenza infection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States estimates that some 36,000 people die in the US every year as the result of influenza. In Perú, the annual number of cases and deaths due to influenza are still being determined, but we can reasonably expect them to be at least proportional to those in the US. (Perú’s population of 29 million is a little less than 10% than that of the US.) With influenza such a common illness, we rarely pay it much attention, until something changes.

Living in Peru
Jobana Soto

Last week marked the end of a journey for a group of trekkers seeking the wondrous Machu Picchu. While surviving the Inca Trail is an accomplishment in itself, the prestige was elsewhere. With the support of the Love Hope Strength Foundation (LHSF), 62 trekkers from around the world came together to climb the Inca monument in an event called Peru Rocks. 

Peru Rocks is the latest project from LHSF where musicians, cancer survivors and supporters embark on an enlightening journey celebrating life in the face of cancer. A year ago, LHSF broke the record for the highest concert ever performed at the base camp of Mount Everest for Everest Rocks last year.

Living in Peru
Jobana Soto

For Limeños, everyone is familiar with the great Jockey Plaza. Its stores, fashion, restaurants, major events, practically anything you need at this high-end one-stop shop. But while it's important for Jockey Plaza to keep its reputation as a fashionable retail market, it doesn't mean they can't venture into the world of charity.

For the first time ever, Jockey Plaza will dedicate October for breast cancer awareness month with their campaign Campaña Contra el Cancer de Mama. This campaign is something the retail giant will organize in the following years to come, says Yarina Landa, Comercial and Marketing manager for Jockey Plaza.

By Jobana Soto

Thousands of lives are lost a year from cancer, a seriously fatal and complicated disease that’s sweeping the country, being rated as the second largest cause of death in Peru. Despite cancer’s dreary image, many are surprised when they hear all it takes to prevent such a disease is an annual exam. This exam could very well be the difference between life and death.

Written by John W Wang, M.D.


Peru and its Challenges

I came to Peru for the second time with a team of 16 (students, professors and other volunteers), from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, primarily to spearhead a medical initiative in Ancash Province, some 300 miles north of Lima.

Up to 2 years ago, Peru was just a country in South America in my conscious thought. I knew nothing more about it, save for the fact that llamas flourished there.

In June 2006, I was invited by a Prof John Duffy of the University of Massachusetts to come to Ancash Province to help assess the medical situation in some 40 medical clinics serving some 100,000 people in the remote hinterlands of the high sierras of the Andean Mountain range.

Ancash Province

If Lima is a bustling city with 10 million inhabitants, many with cell phones, riding in cars, taxis and buses, enjoying the amenities of a modern city, these villagers in Ancash subsist on 2 soles per day, mainly on agricultural products eked out off the rough and unforgiving terrain.

These people have no running water, no electricity, no heat, and no indoor bathrooms or lavatories. They live in abject squalor and poverty, among mounds of refuse, sewage and animal dung. Their children are stunted, anemic and are malnourished, despite food aid and humanitarian efforts from the World Bank, UNICEF, WHO, many NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and religious organizations. They sleep huddled in adobe huts with just one room, with a smoky indoor wood fire to try to warm themselves. (This winter, because of an unusually cold snap, schools are starting later in an attempt to protect young children from exposure to the cold).

Medical Clinics

The medical clinics are largely bare structures with little medical equipment, staffed by nurses and health technicians. Doctors do visit but a few times each year, and then only for a few hours.
None of the clinics I visited had any microscopes or any facility for making any examination of blood, sputum or stools. The nurses see their patients, listen to their complaints, do a cursory examination, and prescribe medications, based on their best judgment.

Many of the children go on to die, and indeed, according to statistics, a good percentage of all deaths in Peru are of children under the age of 10 years. During my last trip to Ancash Province, a mother tearfully recounted having 6 children, 3 of whom are dead, and the other 3 struggling with illnesses that no one seems to be able to diagnose or cure.