|
|||||||||
|
Today, as we entered the community of Valdez our presence hardly went unnoticed--a group of “gringos” in cars is hardly an ordinary sight here. This community was vastly different from the city of Portoviejo with only one paved road that ran through the community. We were greeted by three people from PLAN Internacional-- an organization that works with communities to help improve their lives. They implement a selection process to determine which communities are at high risk and train community volunteers in order to create a sustainable system of health care and education.
We broke up into three groups, each one having a community volunteer trained by PLAN Internacional to guide them around the community. Each group was responsible for mapping a different area of the community using a Global Positioning System (GPS) to mark each house that they passed along the way. The condition of each house was noted, as were the materials that the floor, walls, and roof were made of. Better materials, such as concrete, greatly reduce the risk of contracting malaria, Chagas’ disease, and a host of other diseases. We paid special attention to houses with thatched roofs and cane walls as these materials greatly increased the risk of contracting vector-borne diseases.
I was very taken aback by what I saw: very few houses were constructed of concrete, many were surrounded by palm trees and had cane walls and thatch roofs. However, the people of the community were very open to us and to PLAN Internacional. Just think, if these people used bednets they would greatly decrease their chances of contracting these horrible diseases. All these people need is to be educated about vector-borne diseases because many are not even aware of how they are transmitted. If they don’t know about them, how can they possibly take precautions to prevent them? Hopefully, we can help to educate these people and give them a chance to fight back.
|
||||||||
