As someone
who has asthma, let me assure you that breathing
is NOT over rated! It is frightening
to gasp for breath. On Easter I ended up
in the hospital because my breathing was horribly difficult. The harder I tried to breathe, the more
afraid I became, which makes breathing that much harder.
When I
went to the hospital we just got in a car and drove for 40 minutes…THAT was
frightening enough for me. In Nueva Vida, when a child has a severe
asthma attack, the father most often has to put the child on a bike and ride to
the hospital in Ciudad Sandino. This
is dangerous. Nueva Vida has five gangs
and they come out like vampires after the sun goes down. In February, they beat Pedro’s son to death and last week stabbed
to death a friend of our clinic staff.
It is extremely dangerous.
We have identified over 400 children in Nueva
Vida with asthma.
Our asthma program has expanded due to a grant through
Boston College. We have place nebulizers in homes of health promoters
so that parents can try to manage the crisis within the community; therefore,
not have to leave the dangerous barrio to go to the hospital. Through this program we have four support groups for parents to share
with each other and learn from our nurse.
We have an excellent brochure to teach parents
about when to use inhalers and when to go to the hospital. It also shows pictures of what triggers
asthma, thanks to a student at BC. AND we have cortisone inhalers to prevent or
reduce greatly asthma attacks. We are
the ONLY clinic that offers these
inhalers in Nueva Vida. Prevention is what is needed.
We work
with parents to help them change or cope
with their environment as they can to reduce asthma attacks…there are so
many triggers: smoking in the home (47% of the adult population smokes!); poorly
ventilated wood burning cook stoves (many older women suffer from emphysema but
have never smoked a cigarette!); burning of trash outside every home once or
twice a day; dust in the dry season; mold in the rainy season; and the neighboring
city dump that burns its trash including toxic plastics (the smokes billows
through Nueva Vida). It is no wonder
even a 3-week-old baby came to the clinic having problems breathing!
Can you imagine having a child grasping for
breath?
Now add: having
to first leave your home and hope that a gang of young men who are on drugs
will not decide to take your bike or rob you or knife you? 
It is
unthinkable…yet, so very, very real.
It is
unthinkable…yet, so very, very real.
This Father’s Day, give the fathers of Nueva
Vida peace of mind by preventing their children from having an asthma attack…give a gift in honor of your father to our
asthma program…for $25 we can buy preventive inhalers to aid a child for 6
months. For $40 we can buy a nebulizer
to put in the home of a child who is affected with asthma. Go to www.jhc-cdca.org/helpFD.html
-Kathleen
