21 January 2001
San Salvador, El Salvador
Dear Fellow Promoters of Health and Social Justice:
Through the tragedy of a recent earthquake I find myself in El Salvador again, doing what I can to accompany this People who have suffered centuries of injustice, including most recently the armed civil conflict, Hurricane Mitch and now this latest. Yesterday and today a DGH team of international and local volunteers (Guillermo Hidalgo, Salvadoran orthopaedist and pediatric nephrologist working at SUNY Downstate, Brooklyn; Denise Zwahlen, Swiss Physician Assistant long-term DGH volunteer working in the Rehabilitation Project in Santa Marta, Caba–as; David Dereczyk, Physician Assistant and DGH Founding Member head of the PA department at Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit; Gladys Vasquez, Registered Nurse and Guillermo's mother;
 "We found persons injured by the earthquake physically as well as mentally, many of whose homes have been destroyed. Many reported being stung by bees and wasps, the insects apparently maddened by the earthquake. We also learned that for several days post-quake the hens had stopped laying, a strange detail which appeared on finding a warm egg near a destroyed home." |
We found persons injured by the earthquake physically as well as mentally, many of whose homes have been destroyed. Many reported being stung by bees and wasps, the insects apparently maddened by the earthquake. We also learned that for several days post-quake the hens had stopped laying, a strange detail which appeared on finding a warm egg near a destroyed home. Our visits have been helpful and appreciated, but the suffering of the people we attended briefly will continue for years, long after the international attention has faded. What can we do to help that?
29 January 2001, Bronx, NY. Now I have returned to my regular job in the South Bronx, teaching in the Primary Care and Social Internal Medicine Residency Programs of Montefiore Medical Center, seeing patients who live in one of the poorest zip-codes in the USA and working with local community organizations. Dr. Marcelo Venegas, first year resident at Montefiore and a DGH volunteer, is on a plane to El Salvador as I write. He will continue the work I described previously, just as the others mentioned have been doing these past days after my departure.
Any of you who have watched recent television reports on El Salvador have seen the tragedy of Las Colinas, Santa Tecla, a neighborhood literally buried by a landslide--itself the result of poor environmental planning (construction of homes of the very rich with complicity of the Salvadoran ARENA government against the protests and even a lawsuit of the opposition/FMLN Santa Tecla Mayor) resulting in more than 600 deaths.
While the Las Colinas site is understandably the focus of international attention, the earthquake destroyed houses and lives in many areas of El Salvador. DGH has chosen to accompany persons in the communities with less or no attention by working together with the following groups: Padre Daniel and the Catholic Base Community "Madre de los Pobres;" the Nazereth Church; Medicos por El Derecho a La Salud; and PROVIDA--El Salvador. We have seen the excellent accompaniment work being done by these organizations, which are dedicated to pursuing long-term solutions with the communities they serve. One hundred percent of donations given to DGH specifically for earthquake relief in El Salvador will be used to support DGH's direct volunteer work (but not airfare--our Volunteers have covered this from their own pockets) including medications and other supplies, or channeled through one of the local organizations mentioned above.
I would like to close this letter by saying that DGH does not usually do acute medical relief work. In the case of this earthquake and Hurricane Mitch before it, we have felt morally obligated to accompany these peoples with whom we have worked for so many years. What DGH usually does is work together with local groups and communities to seek long-term solutions to the chronic emergencies found there, using a Health and Social Justice paradigm. While in El Salvador I was able to meet with many of the Health Promoters I had helped train, who themselves had left Moraz‡n (itself relatively unaffected by the earthquake, though ironically still worse-off than many other areas of El Salvador after the disaster) temporarily to assist voluntarily in solidarity with the devastated communities. I am happy to report that through Medicos por El Derecho a La Salud, DGH will continue to help fund the community work of these Health Promoters.
Please help with a donation, whatever you can give. Your communication, via e-mail or post, also makes a difference. If you have access to the internet, see photos of our work in El Salvador on the DGH web site (www.dghonline.org/earthquake_album.html).
Thank you for your solidarity with the people of El Salvador.
In Liberation Medicine,
Lanny Smith, MD, MPH, DTM&H