Medications for AHMEN-CHIMES Mission to La Moskitia

When you go to a pharmacy to fill a prescription written by your health care provider, it's a routine.  The doctor has given you a piece of paper with the name of the medication and its strength, how often you are to take it, and the amount for the pharmacist to give you.  Simple.  The only real decision is where you choose the get the prescription filled.  Every busy street corner has a drug store, sometimes "mom and pop" shops where you've known the man behind the counter for years and sometime a mega-store where you can buy anything from frozen foods to auto parts while they count out your pills.  If you take it to one store the cost may be $4.00, at another the same medication will cost more.  You pay with cash, or check or  credit card or just a co-pay, and your out the door and on your way to feeling better.

A healthy child in Limonales

  Imagine now that you live in a village on the beach in eastern Honduras or 40 miles up a river in the rain forest,  and your child is ill.  Something common in that area, like worms or malaria or asthma.  You'd take her to the doctor, right?   First, the scenario is rather unrealistic in the first place.   There is no doctor in the village to have visited, and if there was, you probably didn't have the few dollars he would charge for his consultation.  So, lets make believe that you did see the doctor.  He writes a prescription just like in the U.S.  Now what?  If you are lucky enough to live in or near a village with a National Health Care facility, you might be able to get the medication there almost for free.  That is if they have any medicine.  There are pharmacies in Honduras and you can buy any medication you want, even without a prescription.  If you are vomiting you can buy something to stop it.... not in a neat pill bottle, but by the single pill.  All for cash.  No money.... no medicine.  If the doctor you saw prescribes an antibiotic for Susie's infection, you have to find someone that is selling it, and you must be able to afford it.  

Dr. Ben Coplan examines a child in Ciriboya

 You make the long trip to a pharmacy .  You have brought all the cash you could scrape together and you are hoping you can afford what the doctor says your child needs.  You had enough money and you go back to you village and give the medicine to your child.  All is well.  Imagine if any one of these steps was impossible to accomplish.  You pray your child gets better in time.

There are few places where people can go to be treated at no cost and receive free medication.  The hospital in Ciriboya is one of note, as is the clinic in Belaire.  There are more places where the patient is charged a token fee which is usually overlooked.  The question of medication availability still is a major hurdle to good and consistent health care.
 
As we plan our mission trip to La Moskitia in April, we receive word that there are no medicines at the Garifuna hospital in Ciriboya.  Despite 24 hour physician coverage, there is no medication there to treat illness.  Besides acquiring enough medications to treat the hundreds of patients we will see in our clinics in La Moskita, AHMEN and CHIMES have taken on the added burden of helping to stock the pharmacies at Ciriboya and several other health care facilities for the poor in Honduras.   This requires a phenomenal amount of money to buy all the medicines.  What is not purchased outright is obtained at reduced cost from several faith based organizations.  Sometimes, we are lucky enough to receive donations from large companies and foundations, but it requires much work applying for grants and filling out applications.  This year we were blessed with some rather large cash donations from friends of AHMEN and CHIMES.  Selecting, and paying for, all the medications for a mission trip is a major undertaking. We bring many thousands of dollars of medication to Honduras yearly.  All of it is freely given to the poor and to those that care for the poor.

A portion of our pharmacy in a classroom in La Marias

The end result is that this April we will bring to Honduras roughly three to four  times the amount of medications we expect to use in our clinics.  The rest will be give to local health care facilities to continue free care after we leave.

Back down the Rio Plátano from Las Marias