We came this year just out of a virus epidemic, Dengue Fever provoked by a mosquito, when the lockdown started in Europe. I am helping out in Immunology during this ongoing pandemic while going on with Haiti and Bolivia. Thank God I specialized in Immunology ten years ago, after the earthquake in Haiti, when I myself became very ill and knew this could be an outcome, and recovered fully.
I follow up online with my Bolivian and Haitian teams, but more than 50% of my doctors' teams have already been infected, with no protective material and no intensive care. Most are around their thirties and get over it, which lets us forward more of the donations to Bolivia and Haiti.
Last week two doctors, around 50, died in a clinic, Villa Primer de Mayo, in the suburbs of Sta. Cruz, Bolivia, where I worked before. The numbers on Google are incorrect: no official healthcare manager has ever come in the 30 years I have been working there. Last week they put more than 1,000 dead people from the streets, cars and homes, in that one Bolivian city alone.
Haiti is also doing very badly, though there are no real numbers. The Haitian "slave workers" in the hotels on the beaches of "paradise" Dominican Republic, same island, Isla Hispaniola, were sent home into the Haitian mountains, where they are infecting lots of others.
Their only "advantage" is that the average lifespan is very low. In the poor Bolivian regions where we worked, a study of mine once found the average life span at 37 years. If people have good nutrition and are young, they will survive. Otherwise there is no option for serious treatment, and discipline is zero. Therefore, we ask your help.
We keep going out with young MD's, but the death of Dr. Ino, Nov. 2019, National Director of Doctors On Mission Bolivia, who worked with me for almost 30 years, doesn't make it easy. We don't want to give up.
I am already 59, and prefer to work this way and wait here until there is a good vaccine, as infection rates are very high in Bolivia and Haiti and there is no protection nor testing in the regions we work. As a doctor you are thrown into these poor health care clinics with too many Covid 19 positive cases, and you can do nothing then being infected too.
This all happened in the year we were thinking to celebrate 30 years of medical mission work with Doctors On Mission. Private clinics in cities or bigger towns have closed their doors, because the government is not doing anything, and the doctors nor their family want to die when patients with Covid 19 come in by the hundreds or thousands.
Thanks again for your faithful commitment, and for helping us keep our head toward God, hoping He will be favorable for each of us. Any support is welcome, as we must pay our doctors, medicines, infrastructure and transport ourselves. God bless you and keep safe! Dr. Rik
