Tag Archives: public health system Mexico

Leilani has been living in Teotitlan del Valle with the Chavez family and volunteering at the public health clinic. She has two weeks remaining of a four-week summer externship program that is part of the UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing global health education curriculum. Because I work at the university, I was able to help arrange this learning experience for her and what she is learning is hands-on, on-the-ground public health nursing. The take away message: not all definitions are the same when interpreted from different cultural perspectives.

Leilani is experiencing public health intervention and education.  She happens to be there during one of the three times during the year — February, May, September — that vaccination campaigns are underway.  With her co-workers, clinic doctors and nurses, this week Leilani spent three days walking the hillside village of 7,000 people to administer vaccines.  On another day, they drove to the highlands to remote mountain villages to see people. “We are working on keeping everyone vaccinated,” she reports.  So many who need vaccines are children.  Leilani noticed that people are not always eager to be vaccinated and she surmises that they don’t totally understand the benefits. Even with local health care providers doing the explaining, there is a lot of resistance, according to Leilani, who wonders how much people still rely on folk traditions to drive their decisions.  In a relatively prosperous village like Teotitlan which has one of the highest standards of living in Oaxaca because of their national rug-weaving reputation , this is not really surprising. There are other barriers to accepting health care technologies — many of the older, traditional people still only speak Zapotec as their sole language.

In the last week, Leilani helped around the clinic, worked with patients who needed their vital signs, height and weight measured before seeing the health professional for a consultation. She changed out the sheets and medical instruments in the consultation rooms.  Leilani reported that she cleaned the instruments using a mix of bleach and detergent, then wrapped the instruments in paper as instructed. Her supervisor explained that this was to keep them “sterile.”  This was not the definition of “sterile” that she was used to working in the U.S. health care system.  She wondered how the word “sterile” translates differently from one culture to another?

Her co-workers are friendly, warm and gracious. They tease her about her curly, thick hair and plaster it down with cream to make it more “work appropriate.” They laugh and sit around the kitchen table sharing stories about life in Mexico and the U.S. “I really like going to the village market,” said Leilani. “We usually make a stop there when we’re walking around the village to give vaccinations. I love the dulces, and I want to try some chapulines!”

Oaxaca dulces (sweets) are delicious, and chapulines (spicy, fried and ground grasshoppers) are a taste treat condiment that tops tacos, enchiladas and soups.