During the month of May, groups from UC Riverside and UC Davis conducted a medical brigade in the community of Jalaca, Talanga in Honduras. During the brigade, students were approached by a young woman who asked them to please visit her grandmother at home since the grandmother could not walk and visit the clinic herself. A Global Brigades doctor and a group of four students went to the young woman’s house to meet Dona Dominga Maria Carcamo, a bedridden 79 year-old who lost her ability to walk after suffering from an accident over three years ago. With tears in her eyes, Dona described the accident that robbed her of her ability to walk: Dona had no light in her home, and one evening, while trying to find wood for a fire, she tripped and fell in the courtyard and broke her hip. Dona’s granddaughter tried to take her to the hospital, but given her age, surgery was considered a risk and the trip to the hospital would have been too expensive and difficult to coordinate for the family given her immobility.
After hearing this heartbreaking story, students from UC Riverside decided to organize personal capacity to raise money to purchase a wheelchair for Dona. Today, Global Brigades was thrilled to deliver the wheelchair, along with other much needed medical supplies to the community, including prenatal vitamins, loratadine, gauze, alcohol, gloves, and more. Click below to see moving photos of the donations to the health center, as well as the house of this humble woman and the moment when Dona received her new wheelchair. Dona was overjoyed to receive this gift and could not thank the UC Riverside students and their generosity enough!
Dr. Jenny Najera
Medical Director Global Brigades
