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Sharing our model in Bogota, Colombia- Caitlin C.
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Oct 2, 2008 Posted by Caitlin CohenI just attended the Network: Towards Unity for Health conference in Bogota, Colombia. There are 340 participants from 45 different countries, all of whom are trying to tackle primary health care and health education. Discussions include brain-drain, medical school educations, and how to promote pro-poor healthcare policies.
I was invited to present a workshop entitled “Using Health to Build Power” about using community organizing strategies for health. The diversity of participants was incredible… I learned about medical education in Mozambique and at Harvard, anti Gender-based violence campaigns in Egypt, and clinical outreach in Nepal. It was a pleasure to share our model and see how it is applicable to projects around the world.
One of the most amazing parts of the experience was the site-visit. I spent a day at each of two healthcare programs in slum communities south of Bogota. The slums here are nothing like in Mali: one of them, Ciudad Bolivar, has close to 2 million residents and is a strong hold for the FARC rebel movement as most of the residents there are displaced by drug crime and war. In the emergency ward of one hospital, every single trauma case was violence-related. This was contrasted to the Hospital Pablo VI, which works with 550,000 disenfranchised people in a slum called Bosa. This hospital is not really a hospital: They have sixteen very small health access points, two referral points, and HUNDREDS of sustainable community projects such as day-cares, counseling, “mothers in action”, latrines, river cleanliness projects, traditional healers associations, etc. The best part of it is: all of their projects are locally-run and all of them try to link the government directly with the community. Furthermore, they are entirely government funded, and do not receive any more funding than any other public hospital group in Bogota. In short, they are doing amazing things with very little.
It was inspirational to see that a program with a model similar to ours can be successful, even in a slum that is plagued by violence. It gives me hope that we can share our model and have an impact far beyond our community.