top of page

Surgery is needed, next step is a 4 hour drive

Writer's picture: Kate FeibuschKate Feibusch

It’s 3am and the Peten Health Community Health Workers are loading this rented van full of 13 pre-surgical patients. They will drive 4 hours and wait in line all day to be evaluated by a team of American doctors on a “mission trip”. If they get approved for surgery — and most of them will, because the CHWs prescreened them last month — they will get a future appointment in Antigua, which is a 16-hour bus ride away.

Cumbersome? Absolutely. But it’s the best solution we have found to help our subsistence farmworker patients get their hernias and prolapsed uteruses repaired.


Comments


Commenting has been turned off.

Petén Health is in Windsor, California, USA

El Programa de Salud Comunitaria and its Casa de Salud are in Petén, Guatemala

© 2017-2025 by Petén Health <info@petenhealth.org>

bottom of page