Amid wars and poverty: how volunteers from Russia organized a network of clinics in Central America

International charitable organization Health & Help For more than 6 years, he has been building and providing charity clinics in the most remote corners of the planet - where, before their appearance, there was often no medical care in principle. Employees and volunteers of the organization help residents of remote villages in Guatemala and Nicaragua, attract doctors, find expensive medicines and try to ensure that even vulnerable groups of the population receive qualified medical care. Health & Help is currently registered in the US, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Photo: Health&Help

Knowing all this, it is hard to imagine that a network of clinics was founded from scratch ... two girls from Russia - a doctor Victoria Valikova and her friend Karina Basharova. Both hospitals in Guatemala and Nicaragua appeared solely thanks to the forces and means of ordinary people, and the local residents themselves participated in their construction. The full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine, despite its geographical distance from Central America, has seriously hit the charitable organization.

Although the organization is international in nature, a significant part of the donors were located in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Sanctions make it much more difficult for Russian volunteers to get to Guatemala and Nicaragua, and it has become impossible to help with money to provide clinics from Russian accounts. About how the unique project was born and what difficulties it is facing now, Victoria and Karina shared in an interview with ForumDaily.

Everyday life of a tropical doctor

Prior to her arrival in Central America, Victoria Valikova worked as an infectious disease specialist in the emergency room of a state hospital in her native Ufa. Once, having been on vacation in Asia and seeing poverty with her own eyes, the girl with the maximalism of youth decided to help the locals.

«It seemed to me that now we can fix everything. I remember that I began to send applications to various organizations that send doctors to Africa and Asia, and at the same time I was looking for opportunities to improve my skills to work in such conditions. As a result, I was able to enroll as a tropicologist (specialist in tropical diseases - FD) at an institute in Belgium", says Vika.

In addition to education in tropical medicine, the girl was trained in the skills of organizing medical care in places with limited resources. After graduation, Victoria became a volunteer doctor in a Belgian clinic providing medical care to the people of Guatemala.

«I lived in a remote village, without electricity, without water and without communication, an 8-hour drive to the nearest town. In the clinic where I worked, I was the only doctor, although there was a midwife and other staff besides me.", Vika recalls.

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Soon, an armed conflict began in the area where Victoria worked, and the volunteers had to be hastily evacuated. After that, Vika worked in Honduras and Haiti, where, together with other doctors, she participated in the elimination of the 2015 cholera epidemic.

«I have worked in several organizations and found that each of them had quite significant shortcomings that I would like to correct. For example, in the Belgian organization, there were constant interruptions in medicines, logistics were poorly organized, and volunteers, including myself, at that time did not speak Spanish well. In an American organization I worked with in Honduras, doctors did not understand patients who did not speak English. In Haiti, even at a charity Catholic hospital, the prices were quite high, and many people could not afford medicines.", - says Victoria.

Photo: Health&Help

First steps

After some time, Vika returned home and started working again in the Ufa hospital, but she did not give up her dream of opening her own charity clinic. Soon she met her future colleague Karina Basharova.

«We met Vika when she returned from her volunteer missions in Central America in 2015. She told me about her idea to open a charity clinic in Guatemala. At that moment, I really wanted to create my own startup or project that would change the world, and therefore I immediately caught fire with her idea. We began to formulate questions and work out a plan. Everything had to be mastered by ourselves, because before we both had never done anything like this", - shares Karina.

At that time, she was still in the 10th grade and dreamed of doing something unusual after school. Now we can say that her dream has come true.

«We prepared the plan for several months, and then moved on to its implementation by talking about our idea to everyone we met. We hitchhiked around the country, Vika gave lectures on tropical medicine and talked about her volunteer experience. We began to give interviews often and thus were able to gather around us the first circle of like-minded people", - explains Karina.

Having collected funds from the first donors, the girls started fundraising on the American platform. In parallel, they were looking for volunteers willing to go to Central America: architects, builders and medical specialists. When Karina finished school, the girls went to Guatemala.

Construction in Spartan conditions

According to Victoria, putting the idea into practice was much more difficult than it seemed at first. Armed conflicts periodically arose in Guatemala, because of one of them the girls had to hastily change the construction site. Another problem arose at the new location: local officials decided to make money on the project.

«The person who promised to allocate us a place for a clinic told the local residents that we were allegedly collecting money from them for construction. Of course, this was a lie. As a result, the locals literally went at us with a machete", Vika recalls.

Finally, the choice of girls settled on the village of Chuinahtahuyub, where the descendants of the Maya Indians live.

«The village is located at a crossroads, it can be reached from different regions. Now even more patients come to us than we originally expected. For example, last year in total we received more than six thousand patients in both clinics. Perhaps it was also due to the fact that we work around the clock for emergencies. Even during the COVID-19 epidemic, we closed for only two weeks, but continued to support chronic patients and dispense medicines in a contactless way', Victoria explains.

Construction progressed slowly. There was a catastrophic lack of money, in addition to construction, friends constantly had to look for new donors and volunteers. During construction, girls and volunteers lived in a nearby school. They had to sleep in tents on the floor, wash with cold water, and eat mainly pasta and rice with vegetables. The girls actively involved local residents in the construction. In addition to practical assistance, their involvement also had a psychological effect: the Guatemalans were much more careful about the project in which they had invested their labor.

Photo: Health&Help

In parallel with the construction, Vika and Karina opened a medical center in the same school and immediately began to receive patients - in many ways to show the locals that they really came to help them.

«People came with a variety of diseases. Many had diabetes, which is also often an indirect consequence of poverty. Nearly half of Guatemalan children go hungry, and childhood malnutrition often leads to obesity in adulthood, which increases the risk of type XNUMX diabetes. We are the only center in the region that gives insulin free of charge, and therefore the lives of many people directly depend on our work.", Vika clarifies.

Many complained of high blood pressure, there were also patients with asthma, often had to deal with a variety of infections and parasites.

Volunteer Selection

Gradually, the girls managed to create a huge volunteer team - now about 80 people work online, and almost 20 people work monthly in clinics. They keep the entire organization running, helping raise funds for medicines and other expenses, and looking for new volunteers.

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«To come to our clinics, it is not enough just to fill out an application. You must also learn Spanish, validate your education and be interviewed by our medical experts. Nevertheless, volunteers come to us from all over the world: from the USA, Europe, Latin America, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus", the friends emphasize.

Gradually, Health & Help began to implement projects together with the Ministry of Health of Guatemala. The authorities of the country could not provide material assistance, but actively attracted volunteers to participate in programs to support pregnancy, vaccinate children and adults. However, difficulties still arose from time to time.

Photo: Health&Help

sanctions strike

From the very beginning, like-minded people faced problems in finding medicines. Gradually, they began to work with large American funds, which began to supply them with the necessary medicines. However, with the onset of the pandemic, part of the funds was reassigned to work with covid, and most importantly, many countries banned the transportation of medicines across the border. As a result, all medicines have to be purchased in Guatemala and Nicaragua, which has increased the costs of clinics many times over. Combined with the sanctions, which "cut off" the help of Russian donors, Health & Help has become very acutely aware of the lack of funds.

«Basically, all our donors are ordinary people who donate $15-25 every month. Our clinics exist thanks to private donations, including from Russia, where there were many people who knew us from the time when we just started creating Health & Help. All donations go through our official website he-he.org and go directly to the account of the organization in the United States, so when the war began, almost half of the subscriptions from our donors were blocked due to sanctions. At the same time, we, of course, can accept assistance from any other countries, ”Karina comments.

Volunteers emphasize that in order to make another person's life better, you do not need to have a lot of money in your pocket - just sign up for a monthly donation for the amount that will be comfortable for you.

“If you want to help Health & Help patients continue to receive medical care and support clinics in Guatemala and Nicaragua during this difficult time, you can go to our official website he-he.org – and become our donor or volunteer", - sums up Karina Basharova.

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