Primary Care in Chiapas, Mexico

Some of these posts are backdated, due to poor internet access in Chiapas.  But in short, thanks to funding from the Partners Center of Excellence, I'll be spending the next month in rural primary care clinics in Chiapas, Mexico with Compañeros en Salud, the Mexican arm of Partners in Health.  While I work on my Spanish (starting from a place of fumbling with many years out of practice), I'm hoping to get a sense of how primary care is practiced in a place where routine health exams are not the norm, and where people come without good access to the health care system.

My role here is as a medical consultant to the Mexican pas antes who are stationed here for a year.  They do six years of schooling, including a year of hospital training.  As a payback to their community (because medical school is paid for by the government), all pasantes do a year of community service.  My first post is in Laguna de Cofre, high up in the mountains of Chiapas, and about two hours from Jaltenango.  We have a small house next to the clinic where my pasante and her nurse live along with anyone else who comes along and needs a place to crash, like me.

On our first day, we left Jaltenango at 7am and headed straight for clinic, as the line was already getting long by the time we arrived at 9:30  From what I understood from my broken, aching Spanish, today's clinic included (in semi-medical speak)

Pts 1-4: pregnant mother and there kids, there for HIV testing.  Kids negative, mother positive.  Presumably from father, who travels back and forth to Tiajuana for work, as HIV rates are quite low here. 

Pt 5: well pregnancy check

Pt 6:  woman with pain in multiple parts of body, likely from stress.  IUD placed. 

Pt 7: woman with RA, who was getting dexamethasone injections and developed Cushings Syndrome and diabetes.  Now off steroids, but in lots of pain.  No clear other medication options available.

Pt 8: 60 yo man with exertional chest pain. No EKG or stress test easily available.  No clear idea of protest probabilities without lipid testing. Opted for nitrate trial diagnostically.  

Pt 9: 70 y.o. man with hypertension and vision changes.  As a side note, he was as tall standing as I am sitting.  

Pt 10: 70 y.o M with hemorrhoids and hearing issues.  Clearly no colonoscopy, but they have hydrocortisone suppositories with lidocaine in them.  Brilliant!

Pt 11: hypertension and sore throat

Pt 12:  well pregnancy check.  23 year old with three other children

Pt 13: sick kid (eeek! I don't know what to do with kids!) with diarrhea.  Fortunately, the wonderful

Pasante that I am working with knows kids may better.

Pt 14: teenaged boy with facial dermatitis

Pt 15: urosepsis in a 70 y.o. man with a permanent supracatheter.  Looked bad.  IV fluids, abx, monitored, no labs.  Will see tonight and tomorrow (he lives across the street) to make sure he doesn't need to be shipped to a local hospital (which he almost certainly does, but it is such an issue here to make happen)

Pt 16: told by a naturalist doc that he had bladder inflammation that he healed.  Wanted to talk to someone else, which is good because the story didn't make sense.

Pt 17: young girl with diarrhea

Pt 18: very depressed 15 y.o. girl who walked 2 hours to get to clinic.  Her problem is, in short, that she is a female in a a village in Chiapas without the ability to get out.  Not something sertaline will help, but that was what we had,

Pt 19: 19 y.o. lady with constipation

Pt 20: 15 y.o who was pregnant.  Wanted an abortion, but it is illegal in this state.  More about that later, which I find baffling and angering.

Off to this spot, which is my bed for the next ten days.

And our kitchen, which is barely functional but doesn't really need to be.

-Sarah Kimball, MD