Happy New Year everyone! Here’s a quick re-cap of some of our greatest accomplishments and successes in 2010. Thank You brigaders, community members, staff, and supporters for all of your work in helping us reach an unprecedented number of beneficiaries in 2010!
Public Health Brigades Honduras:
- 414 volunteers worked on Public Health Brigades projects.
- Basic Sanitation Committees were established in Joyas, El Junco, and El Encinal.
- Among 75 homes in the community of Joyas, projects were built in 67 homes (the remaining 8 houses were considered unoccupied or disqualified from the list of benefited houses).
- In total, 45 pilas, 53 latrines, 148 concrete floors, and 60 eco-stoves were built within the selected 67 homes.
- The Public Health Brigades program established a close relationship with Microfinance Brigades, elaborating a payment schedule for the projects and utilizing the community banks’ access to savings as a method to increase community involvement in the continuation of construction of projects.
- Special community-wide projects were conducted, which included: installing 14 trash bins in Joyas, installing book shelves at the school in El Encinal, and planting 800 saplings as part of a reforestation effort in Joyas and El Junco.
Medical Brigades Honduras:
- Launched the new medical model in 2010, allowing brigades to stay longer in each community to provide more in-depth health screening procedures and provide greater disease prevention/health promotion education
- Medical Brigades visited 188 communities in Honduras
- We saw 62,611 patients (of that, 228 were referred to a hospital and 44 were treated for life threatening emergencies)
- Began giving pap smears as part of the new medical brigade model. So far, 468 pap smears were given (with 237 results testing abnormal, and 4 patients referred to hospitals because they were in stage one cervical cancer)
Dental Brigades Honduras:
- 5,620 patients received extractions
- 10.097 fluoride treatments were given
- 1,192 patients received fillings
New Initiatives and Programs:
- Global Brigades Association (GBA) identified Ghana, Africa as the location for the next GBA headquarters.
- Global Brigades implemented the Community Health Workers (CHW) program in Honduras. The CHW program helps train community members in basic health practices and preventive disease measures so that community members can provide an ongoing level of care in the locality between brigades.
- Global Brigades brought on a new position to coordinate and streamline the educational component of each brigade program.
