Medical

What is a Brigade?

Brigades defn groups of passionate volunteers mobilizing toward positive social change.

Mobile Medical Clinics
A Medical Brigade in Central America provides volunteers with the opportunity to make a tangible impact on communities while gaining real life experience in the field of international medicine. Prior to travel, volunteers collect medicines, recruit health professionals and fundraise.  Once in Central America, the team will visit up to four different partner communities to administer day-long clinics and conduct health workshops.

 

The mobile clinic has five stations: intake (recording patient demographic information), triage (collecting main complaints and vitals), consultations (shadowing doctors as they diagnose and prescribe), pharmacy (filling prescriptions), and education (delivering workshops on preventive healthcare). Evenings prior to each brigade, groups learn from local doctors about the health needs of the specific communities, organize medicine, and delegate duties for the next day. 

 

Many diseases (often life-threatening) could be prevented with improvements in infrastructure in the home and education.  Groups may extend their stay to implement public health education workshops and work alongside community members to build eco-stoves, latrines, concrete floors and water storage units.  

 

 

Sustainability - Monitoring Success and Follow-up
It is our absolute priority to provide communities a consistent and quality level of health care.  Each village receives a medical brigade every three to four months.  In between brigades our field office health professionals are there to provide follow-up and track health trends.  In addition, we've launched a community health worker program, where local community members are trained to give basic care and given cell phones to communicate with local clinics.

The need for health care is being quantifiably improved in the villages.  Four years ago, if we conducted a brigade in one of our villages, more than 1,000 patients would have been expected.  In 2009, in that same community, we would receive 300 to 500.  The decrease in patient numbers allow us to provide more thorough treatments.  

Our sustainability is reliant on the passion of volunteers' and donors' to perpetuate this model. The evidence is in the numbers, as we've been able to exponentially grow to more than 4,000 volunteers treating more than 70,000 patients, annually.  For every new group or club that travels to implement a medical brigade, we can select a new village to partner with... another community to receive a consistent level of health care where they wouldn't otherwise receive. 

We have also launched additional programs to provide a holistic level of service to the communities. These programs address public health infrastructure, clean water systems, dental care and microfinance to improve local economies and nutrition.  

 

Electronic Patient Records
During the brigade, volunteers can utilize technology to make the brigade operate more efficiently. We are very pleased to announce the successful pilot of a new data informatics system, implemented by USC in spring 2008.  At each station we set up laptops linked to a local server to collect patient data. After the consultation, the patient form is sent virtually to the pharmacy where it is printed and filled. In addition to keeping track of patient history, the data informatics system allows us to track health trends in the community and pull data to make adjustments in healthcare.
 

Referrals and Liability
If a patient comes in with a condition that is beyond the medical brigade's scope, we will sponsor referrals for them to be treated at one of our partner clinics. Under Honduran law, US medical professionals do not assume liability.  Honduran doctor(s) are present on every brigade and assumes all liability for malpractice.