Gloves-On Volunteering In Peru

Our program, Health and Wellness in Peru, is really about as good as it gets if you're wanting to volunteer on a medical project.  All of GeoVisions' medical volunteer projects are hands on, making them perfect for nursing and medical students.

This program is a great hands-on opportunity to work toward improving health care in Lima or Cusco, Peru. Our volunteers work directly with local Peruvians who have little access to health care. GeoVisions provides ample opportunity to work with locals of various age groups to bring adequate health care, intervention and prevention to the people these clinics serve.

Alex Cabble is a GeoVisions volunteer on-site right now.  She is documenting her trip on Tumblr with her Blog, Across The Equator.  Here is an excerpt from a recent post:  "Last week I was in Topico and I was able to clean a wound on a woman’s toe by myself! I also talked to a man who was getting stitches on his arm after a dog bit him about New York for a while! Topico was interesting and I definitely had more of a hands on experience there. It was nice to talk to some of the patients and I liked seeing all of the babies and helping to break their fevers. The kids here are sooo adorable!"

Alex writes about other hands-on cases she has had recently, like "my first patient was an older woman who didn’t have a toenail on her big toe."  And, "a 7 year old boy who fell and had a gash right above his left eyebrow. The gash, at its widest, was probably about the size of a dime and went pretty deep.  He ended up getting stitches inside the gash and then stitches on the outside to hold it together."  Alex' day ended here, "another patient was a 10 month old baby that had a fever. I took her temperature and it was 38.9 degrees C when the normal temp is 37 degrees C. We put some wet towels on her to bring down the temperature and by the time that I left, it was normal again!"

Be sure to read her Blog for more details and she has included a lot of photos as well.

Oh…and as I prepared this Blog to go live, we received this email from Alex' friend Kelsy who is also on the same program:

"Just checking in to say hi - everything here has been absolutely amazing so far! Alex and I have been doing great, our host family is wonderful, and the clinic has been so great. I worked in gynecology and obstetrics the first two weeks which was really neat - I got to see a few live births too so that was cool. I'm working in the pharmacy now which is good, because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get there at all. Our Spanish is improving tremendously. The ruins and views here are so incredible. We just went to Machu Picchu yesterday, which was amazing, and we've also been to Ollantaytambo, Pisaq, Saqsayhuaman, Salineras, Maras, and Moray. The night life in Cusco is a blast too. We're both learning lots of salsa! Overall, everything's been wonderful and I would definitely have to say I've been having the time of my life. Learning tons, and having a blast too!"

GeoVisions founded the Conversation Corps, and specializes in medical volunteer projects for the traditional volunteer abroad program.