Health Care for 10,000 Nicaraguan Campesinos

2023 will end soon and I want to take this opportunity to look back at the history and development of our work for campesinos in the north of Nicaragua.

In 2005, my late husband Reinhart Bein and I founded this mobile clinic at the request of the German ngo German Doctors. Since then, we have continued to organize, coordinate, and support this project. From the beginning, we have worked in cooperation with our local Nicaraguan partner.

In 2015, after ten years of supporting the mobile clinic, German Doctors stopped working in Latin America. Our own NGO Nicaragua-Projekt took over the project.

For eleven years, doctors from Germany volunteered to come to Nicaragua and staff the mobile clinic as it made its rounds to the eleven villages we serve. In 2016, we transitioned to a different model. We had fourteen basic health care providers called brigadistas trained through AMC, a local Nicaraguan ngo. These local health care providers volunteer their time to provide basic health care in their villages and administer mini-pharmacies (botequines). During our regular visits to the villages with our mobile clinic, our nurse provided support for the brigadistas and resupplied the mini-pharmacies. In 2017, we hired a local Nicaraguan doctor full-time to travel with the mobile clinic and staff our permanent clinic in Ocotal. We now have one doctor and one nurse working full-time, in addition to our brigadistas.

Over the years, we have continued to improve and adapt the mobile clinic project:: working with a British ngo, we now keep electronic medical records; we have established cooperation with a network of local doctors; we implemented special events like papanicolau (PAP) tests; we communicate frequently with our brigadistas with cell phone we provide; we offer regular continuing education to our brigadistas; and we have established a permanent clinic in Ocotal. All of this important work— which is offered free of charge to eleven villages of campesinos and their families — is paid for by private donations. It is only possible because of the generous donations we receive from our supporters like yourselves. Thanks very much to all of you!