USA Health volunteers provide needed care during outreach campaign in Peru
USA Health volunteers returned home from a trip to Peru where they provided healthcare and needed vaccines to residents, including at an orphanage, while strengthening educational ties for future trips with medical students and residents.
Earlier this week, USA Health volunteers returned home from a trip to Peru where they provided healthcare and needed vaccines to residents, including at an orphanage, while strengthening educational ties for future trips with medical students and residents.
One of the volunteers, Danny Rickert, chief policy officer for USA Health, said he looked forward to this outreach for almost a year. Originally planned for 2021, the trip was postponed because of the rise of the Delta variant along the Gulf Coast and surrounding communities.
Peru has one of the world’s highest COVID-19 death rates per capita, exceeding 590 deaths per 100,000 people. In June 2021, the death rate surpassed 180,000 people and continues to rise.
The success USA Health demonstrated in delivering COVID-19 vaccines to large numbers of people has drawn international attention. CerviCusco, a nonprofit organization in Peru internationally recognized for its HPV vaccination program, partnered with USA Health to provide COVID-19 vaccines and other healthcare services in communities in and around Cusco, Peru.
Rickert said the original goal was to set up mass vaccination sites for Cusco and the surrounding areas using the same template USA Health utilized at the civic center. “We didn’t stop at vaccinations,” he said. “Seeing the need for more services, we split into groups and administered medical care to adults and children. We were even able to have a consult with Dr. Benjamin Estrada, who was over 3,000 miles away back in Mobile.”
The trip proved successful on several fronts, as new relationships were formed, presenting future opportunities for medical students, physicians-in-training, and students in the college of nursing and physician assistant studies. CerviCusco’s executive director now has plans to visit USA Health in May.
“We built a partnership with CerviCusco that will allow us to enhance the education of our students and residents,” Rickert said. “This partnership has the potential to expand the research and education of our students as they will be able to have a global healthcare experience that will truly open their eyes to healthcare around the world.”
