Clinic in the Caribbean

This past weekend I had the pleasure of going to a small group of islands called the Cayos Cuchinos. There are about 13 small islands and are visible from where I live. I believe only 4 of the islands are actually big enough to be inhabited, as none of them are even a mile long. It takes an hour boat ride to reach them. The islands have no medical care available to them other than about 3 months out of the year when a nurse from the States comes down to hold clinic and once every six weeks when one of the doctors from the hospital comes over for a few days. For any other emergencies they have to travel via boat all the way to Loma de Luz. If it's stormy or the water is rough, it takes even longer than an hour to get to the hospital.

We did a small clinic this weekend. People from the different islands boated over throughout the day. It was really nice, actually. In between patients coming and going we would go snorkling:)

View from Clinic

Most of the patients we saw came for refills of medications, or to get their blood pressure or blood sugar checked. We had a couple kids come in with bad weight loss, probably from parasites and amoebas.

Sunday morning we lead a Sunday school class on one of the islands. The kids were so cute! We taught them about Joshua and the battle of Jericho. By the end of the lesson we had all of them marching around "the city of Jericho", made out of chairs stacked on each other. It was a lot of craziness...but fun!