Upon my initial research on healthcare in Nicaragua, I found several articles praising its quality and affordability. At first this surprised me because in class we often discussed global health and Nicaragua always came up as one of the countries facing lots of problems with tuberculosis and malaria. Upon closer reading of the articles that were praising Nicaragua's healthcare system, I realized that they were almost exclusively referring to hospitals centered in or around Managua.This would make more sense as Managua is the capital city and one of Nicaragua's most industrial/urban centers. They also seemed to appeal more to readers who were looking to retire somewhere outside the United States, thus money would probably not be an issue. It was then that I began focusing my research on two main things, access to healthcare and healthcare in rural areas.
The topic of healthcare and access to it specifically in rural areas is extremely important to consider in Nicaragua because nearly half of its population lives in rural areas. In these areas, access to healthcare especially at the caliber that Managua offers, is rare. In fact, Doctors for Doctors state that only about a third of the population has access to healthcare and only a little over 6% of the population are insured. One can only imagine, how many of the remaining in that one third can actually afford the healthcare. This lack of access to medical attention is reflected in the causes of death and the types of disease that exist in these parts of the country. For example, in rural Nicaragua maternal death is still a fairly big issue, as is malnutrition and dangerous cases of diarrhea especially with infants.
There are several organizations that work in impoverished countries to try and strengthen there healthcare systems such as Doctors for Doctors or Doctors Without Borders. It is also similar to what our Community Health team will be doing in partnership with a local clinic at Nicaragua. Upon reading, "A Model for Sustainable Short-Term International Medical Trips" to evaluate how effective a trip as short as ours (roughly 2 weeks) can actually be, I found myself agreeing strongly with one point this reading brought up. This point was that in order for short-term programs to make an impact, they have to continuously work with/at one site. This means that other programs should be at this same site after another one leaves, so that collectively the site is getting lots of attention even though it may only be getting volunteers for a short period of time.