My final project - research about the access to laboratories in Guatemala and the relationship of that access to treatment of common infections

Academically, we wrapped up the trip when everyone in the group wrote a research project on a topic related to health in Latin America. There were such interesting topics, including the economic effects of Latin American immigrants in the U.S., homosexuality in Quetzaltenango, the importance of HPV screening/education in Guatemala, the advantages of legalizing abortion, remittances, cardiovascular disease and nutrition, a traveler’s guide to Xela, the present health issues of contaminated water, and the issues with processed food and agriculture in the country. When we presented these projects to each other the second-to-last day of the program, I definitely learned a lot!

I got the idea for my paper from working in the social clinic I.C.A. A lot of children and adults come in with infections every day – food poisoning in their intestines, bacterial infections in their lungs and throat, and lots of improperly treated viral colds. They do not have a lot of access to medication (the only place to get free medication is in the hospital) and the same lack of access applies to laboratory tests (for instance to test their feces or sputum for bacteria/virus/parasites). I actually got a bacterial infection from street food back in February, and the first thing I did was get a lab test to make sure it was in fact bacterial (rather than just viral or from parasites) to make sure that taking an antibiotic was the right thing. Most people in Xela do not have that luxury.

Therefore my thesis statement consisted of the following – “The improper treatment of throat, lung, and intestinal infections and the resistance to antibiotics are serious problems in Latin America and Guatemala, and we need to improve this as soon as possible. An important way to do this is increase access to laboratories for the general Guatemalan population.”

Or in Spanish –
“El tratamiento equivocado de las infecciones de la garganta, de los pulmones, y de los intestinos y la resistencia a los antibióticos son problemas serios en América Latina y Guatemala, y necesitamos mejorarlo lo antes que podamos. Un medio importante para hacerlo es aumentar el acceso a los laboratorios.”

My report had a lot of background information related to the incidence of infection in Latin America, the history or antibiotic resistance in Latin American countries, and a few interviews with doctors in the United Status (thank you to everyone who took time to help me out!) about the prevalence of antibiotic resistance and the relative importance of the clinical history and laboratory tests in diagnosing the causes of common infections. We need a lot of things in Guatemala the improve the treatment of infections – more doctors, more facilities, education, and of course more laboratory tests, but I also looked at the financial tangibility of the government (or maybe international donors) providing more services – one of my points is that giving free lab tests to people who need them is cheaper than hiring a doctor to give free consults.

Thanks again to everyone who helped me with this paper (if you want to read it I can e-mail it to you, just be aware it’s in Spanish right now). I really enjoyed writing it, and actually I still want to make a lot of modifications and submit it for a possible research grant to go back to Guatemala and possibly visit Honduras/Nicaragua next summer. We’ll see what happens :)