Intended for healthcare professionals

  1. Student
  2. Caught between two worlds
  3. Caught between two worlds
Student Life

Caught between two worlds

BMJ 2003; 326 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.030225 (Published 01 February 2003) Cite this as: BMJ 2003;326:030225
  1. Tin Do, fourth year medical students1,
  2. Natasha Marston, fourth year medical students1
  1. 1University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

Tin Do and Natasha Marston went to Honduras and spent time working with the indiginous population, the Lenca Indians. They learnt about many of the problems unique to indigenous people and talk about some of them here

We went to Honduras to provide healthcare services and learn about the medical situation, as members of a delegation of medical students with Witness for Peace. We expected to see poor patients with minimal access to health care, a dearth of medical supplies, and the medical consequences of Hurricane Mitch.

The Lenca Indians are an indigenous group of people that we provided care to. We felt that we'd got more than we bargained for; we saw desperation among normally docile women, who shoved their children towards us and pushed aside friends and neighbours for an opportunity to express their concerns about their children's health as well as their own. Medical clinics were often staffed with one inadequately trained healthcare worker in charge of the health of an entire community.

Clinics

The clinics we provided were usually held at local schools and were often filled with malnourished children, some looking much smaller than they should have for their age. Mothers, in desperate need of nourishment and health care themselves, often lamented about how they could not afford medical care, much less provide the family with food, clothing, and shelter. We gave basic care, as we had scant resources …

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