Twenty-five UTRGV School of Medicine students and two faculty members helped more than 900 community members in Nicaragua in a global brigades program last month.
The group helped Nicaraguans from Susuli Central, El Hatillo and El Zapote, which are small communities with exceptional needs, with consultations related to medical and dental care. Services included pap smears, prescribing medicine, measuring blood pressure and advice on nutrition and weight.
“Our purpose of going over there was to volunteer,” biomedical science senior Nitchelle Rodriguez said. “We did consultations, we provided medicine. We also did education talks on health topics like dental hygiene and personal hygiene.”
Rodriguez said UTRGV members of the brigades partnered with the local institutions to conduct research and help Nicaraguans with their long-term problems.
“We saw their health models, what are the diseases the community members have,” she said. “It is not a one-time visit and they’re done. [The organization] keeps up with the patients.”
The brigades were divided into more than five stations. They included students, representatives from local institutions and UTRGV Assistant Professor Hugo Rodriguez and Lecturer Maria Castañeda, who served as physicians.
“Going back with my background, because I retired as a physician a few years ago, so going back to practice for me was wonderful,” Rodriguez said. “It was fantastic.”
He said this experience helped the students mature and realize how thankful they are to have basic services, such as running water, which the communities in Nicaragua do not have.
“We helped one of the communities with a water project to bring water from distance. … We worked shoulder to shoulder with the community, digging a huge hole to help get the water,” Rodriguez said. “They were very pleased with our help.”
The former physician said being there and showing empathy and compassion while doing the consultations and interacting with patients in real-life scenarios makes a completely different experience, because students have to improvise.
“I think the experience was a fantastic experience for the kids to apply previous knowledge from different courses in the [Biomedical Science] department to build real scenarios, real intense, real scenarios, so they can have an idea on how to improvise,” he said. “You don’t know what to expect and you need to improvise.”
The professor said seeing people who have nothing and responding with a smile on their face was priceless, even kids with AIDS and a lot of issues made students and faculty realize how blessed and privileged they are for all the things they have and in many cases complaining, because they don’t have enough.
“It was touching to see how these people live,” Nitchelle Rodriguez said. “Being able to make an impact on them, like they did on us, providing them with health and medicine is truly amazing.”
The brigades are a yearly project for the independent research class.
For more information on the brigades, contact Biology Department Chair Frederic Zaidan III at frederic.zaidan@utrgv.edu.
