Hi Everyone!

I must say I'm getting very excited about the upcoming trip.  As some of you already know, Zehra and I will be conducting needs assessments in the communities we will be visiting.  The goal of these assessments will be to develop future research projects and public health initiatives in El Salvador. 

In order to share our findings I have created an e-Portfolio to document the project.  It is currently a work in progress, but feel free to take a look at:

https://stonybrook.digication.com/el_salvador/Welcome/

If you have an interest in donating to PFCAC or becoming involved in future trips/projects, we'd love to hear from you! 

Cheers,

Kristi

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." ~Winston Churchill

Hi everyone -

Its me again. Just wanted to give a heartfelt thank you to all that read this- as of this morning, my kickstarter proposal finished and I successfully raised enough money for the project!

For those that don't know, kickstarter is a website for artists and designers to propose projects, and to receive funding from the general public. My proposal was to follow PFCAC on their upcoming trip, and to create a photoessay of the work we do.

I successfully raised $1,460. The raised money not only goes toward the logistics and lodging of the trip, but the last remaning equipment and preliminary publishing costs of getting the book together. Thank you to everyone that told their family and friends, and those that helped get the word out. If you're interested in the details of the project, (as well as see the video I created for it,) follow the link.

Cheers,

Nick

In my experience, Humans tend to be selfish. More often than not, we do only things that we want to do. People don't do things that they don't want to do - its simple as that. And yet, I find myself at the end of the day smiling. Why would someone enjoy grant writing and fundraising work, looking for medical supplies and equipment... Why would someone, anyone, put so much effort into organizing a short, <2 weeks trip?

The truth is, I can't answer that. Well, I can - but not in a way you'd probably understand. Not yet.

You'd have to go on a trip and see what I've seen. I joined up with PFCAC on a chance and on a whim, a little under a year ago.And it hit me. Not in a fanciful "that was fun, lets do it again!" kind of way - more of an understanding that the work is important, its needed, and its a delight being there.

If you're a visitor to this page and you're still reading, don't turn away because you don't think you have anything to offer. I myself am not a doctor, i have little first aid training - and yet PFCAC opened their arms to me and believed I could do much to help them. (They were right, incidentally.) If you're interested, contact us.

A simple email, a simple call. I promise you, its more rewarding than you think. All that being said, I'm going back to work.

And I'm still smiling.

-Nick

     One of the foci of this trip will be oral health. The children we've seen on most of our trips have poor dental health. Many do not have toothbrishes or toothpaste. The water is not  fluoridated. Fluoridated vitamins are not available. Children tend to eat high carbohydrate foods and babies are often put to sleep with bottles in their mouths.  The combination of these factors lead to children with multiple cavities at an early age. The presence of such bad oral pathology can lead to malnutrition from inability to eat well and also acts as a chronic source of inflammation.

    When we go to the towns, we've only been able to offer extraction of the bad teeth. The fact that children willing come and point to the tooth they want taken out is a testament to how bad they feel. It feels strange to see them smiling with a bloody gauze pad stuck in their mouth but at least they know that that tooth will stop hurting

   On this trip, we'll be introducing flouride varnish application to our regimen. Flouride varnish can be applied like paint to the children's teeth and act as a protective barrier  against cavities. We'll be teaching the promotorios (health promoters) how to do this as well and will leave varnish bejhind for future application.

    Our trip to El Salvador will begin April 29 when we leave from JFK to got to San Salvador.  Our group is smaller than usual but it gives us increased flexibility in our work.   On the trip will be an emergency physician, a pediatric cardiologist, a pediatric emergency medicine physician, a pediatric resident, a PA who works in Global Health, a neurosurgical PA, a oro-maxillofacial surgeon, a former Peace Corps volunteer, a student and a staff member of Winthrop Pediatric subspecialities.

     We hope to meet with the Ministry of Health on Friday after we arrive, to discuss future plans to work in El Salvador including student and resident rotations as well as work on helping to build an emergency medicine system.  On Sat. we head for Morazan to begin our work in that area. We plan to meet with the local Peace Corps volunteers, the health promoters and the doctors before we begin our work on Sunday.

    This trip will concentrate on teaching and needs assessment. We intend to spend time in the community working with the health promoters and the doctors to identify the burdens of disease in the community as well as enhance the skills of the health personnel.  We expect to learn from our El Salvadoran friends, how we can help them and the communities to be healthier environments.   We're hoping to get to know the towns in a deeper, more personal way.   We will be going to Los Cimientos, EL Volcan and Rancho Camado. All three are up in the hills; Los Cimientos and EL Volcan being on a volcano and Rancho Camado is up in the mountains near the Honduran border.

   We will be preceeded by our friends and collaborators from Engineers without Border-NY who will coming to Los Cimientos in the beginning of April to begin a project involving providing clean water and latrines. Hopefully if we work together we can make a dent in the amount of diarrheal and parasitic disease in the towns.

     So our next trip has been scheduled for the end of April going into May. The rainy season starts in April but with luck we'll avoid the worst of the weather and it won't hamper our efforts. Unfortunately , its a bad time for some but the best time for most. These trip dates are always a compromise.

    So, now the planning begins. We'll have to figure out which towns we will be going to, what projects we will be doing, who'll we'll be working with, what the makeup of our team will be and so many other logistical issues. Slowly,but surely, people are signing up to go and we'll be able to tell from the make up of the team what would be the best projects to tackle on this trip. We've been in touch with our Peace Corps friends (PCV) who appear to be psyched about our coming back. Unfortunately, some of our best PCV friends will be gone by the time we get down  there. Addie left right after our last trip and is now safely in Austin working for a state legislator. Laura, from Los Cimientos, finishes her tour just before we come but we're hoping to convince her to stay a bit extra to join us. Ari, from Torola, heads back to the Garden State after a productive tour. His Mom, Rayni, had collected sneakers and shoes for the children of Torola and through our friends at the 20/30 club they appear to be on the way down.

   If the present roster of personnel holds up, we should have 4 or more dentists/oral surgeons on the trip. Given the rotten state of the dental health of the children in the areas we go to in El Salvador, the presence of so many dental practitioners should be a Godsend. The plan would be to incorporate dental hygiene education into the process of seeing an oral health practitoner so that we can hopefully make a longer term mark on the health of the kids. Teaching them how to brush, providing them with toothbrushes and toothpaste and then having them see a dentist, will go a long way to long term improvement. We'll be looking at getting flouride varnish treatment to apply. By coating the teeth the varnish protects against further damage. Application is simple and we could teach the local health promoters how to do it.  It will also be a time to look at reigniting the research Sara Werb began a few years ago.

   The Women's Health section, headed by Zehra, will be continuing the work they began in Nov. Dan and Krystal, two PCV's in the Perquin area, are working on developing a local event/health fair to attract local women to come to be seen. We'll be covering self breast exam and hopefully working on cerivcal cancer screening and prevention. Several of our crew intend to become Certified Breast Exam Trainers and Zehra is looking to get trained in Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid. This is another area where we will be exploring research opportunities for the future.Reproductive Health

   We'll continue our anemia screening but we may limit it to the very young and very old as our previous trips have shown that they are the mostly likely to have significant anemia.  Anemia in the young can contribute to cognitive dysfunction and in the elderly can be a sign of underlying disease.  If we can help by intervening early, maybe we can make a major improvement.

   We expect to be working with our friends at Engineers without Borders again. They'll begin a project in the town of Los Cimientos. The project will provide latrines and deal with waste water management.  We'll try to measure if this work has an impact on the town's health. Public health is often about infrastructure, not medicines.

    We'll be mostly up in Morazan on this trip but we'll definitely be going back to Fortalenza, in the hills near San Jose Villanueva. I think we all fell in love with this town. They were some of the most welcoming people we've met and we all had the feeling we'd like to go back and help as much as we can. When we left on this last trip, our hostess told my wife she would be waiting for her return, so I think the feeling was mutual.

    There should be some new faces on this trip. Anthony Crocco from Canada is a pediatric emergency physician who I met at a conference he was presenting . He plans to join us, possibly with students or residents. Michael Schwartz, an oral surgeon,, will be making his first trip with us. John Shanley, head of Stonybrook's Global Health program will be a new participant as well and we hope he brings some of his students. Clayton Harper, our Texan oral surgeon may rejoin us and we've got our fingers crossed that Sara Werb, a pediatric oral surgeon from Toronto will be back on board.

  This should be a great trip and maybe the beginning of a new era for PFCAC. I'll keep you posted. Feel free to add your two cents to this thread