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Lavanderos Healthcare Access

Lavanderos is a community located high in the mountains near the municipality of Guinope. Due to its smaller size, this community does not have a health center.  If community members need medical attention, they must travel to Guinope to reach the nearest health center.  Guinope has a CESAMO, or the larger of the two different types of health centers the Honduran government offers.  Here, patients can receive consultations from both doctors and nurses.  They also occassionally have a dentist on staff for dental work.  Although the level of health care available in Guinope is higher than many regions, community members in Lavanderos must walk over 2 hours to reach the clinic.  There are no health workers at the community level either.

Community Demographics

Lavanderos is home to about 515 people and has about 183 homes, with an average of 4 inhabitants per home.  Lavanderos is very far removed from any urban areas and buses do not come by the communtiy very often.  Therefore, they do not have good access to resources outside of the community.  About 7 smaller communities near Lavanderos come to receive medical and dental care while brigades are there.

Brigade Site Information

Since the community does not have a health center, we hold brigades at the school. The school is small, with about 4 rooms available but ample much outdoor space.  Doctors spend an average of 10 minutes with each patient and we are able to provide 5-6 educational charlas a day.  Each brigade sees an average of 150 patients per day. Below are some pictures of the brigade site:

Current Community Initiatives

No other organizations bring brigades to Lavanders.  Global Brigades recently did a study here to see if a water system would be viable in this community.  To find out more about the potential for a water project in Lavanderos, visit the Lavanderos Engineering Page.

Community Health Statistics

Below is a chart showing the illnesses treated on our most recent brigade to Lavanderos.

Below is a chart showing the dental procedures performed on our most recent brigade to Lavanderos.

Current Status

Last Visit: 1/21/2014

This past June, a group of students from the City College of San Francisco traveled to Lavanderos for their Medical and Dental Brigade.  With 16 student volunteers and the help of both foreign and local health care professionals, they saw 364 medical patients over 3 days, as well as 39 dental patients.  They were able to help provide over 20 hours of health education to children and adults in the community.

Visit Other Programs in Lavanderos

Global Brigades strives to implement a model of Holistic Development in communities through a system of collectively implementing health, economic, and education initiatives to strategically meet a community's development goals. Learn more about the other programs being implemented in Lavanderos:

 DentalMicrofinanceEngineeringWaterPublic HealthBusinessArchitectureCHW