Dominican Republic

Twice a year, rotating pediatric medical teams from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia's Alliance for International Medicine (www.chop.edu/aim) , travel to the Batays around Consuelo in the southeastern Dominican Republic. The Batays are the communities where sugar cane workers live. The Batays are often far from a main road and are without running water, electricity, or access to markets, transportation or health care. The cane workers are primarily Haitian, with only a small number of Dominican workers. The nurses and doctors of AIM are part of a Dominican mobile health clinic traveling to the Batays to provide care to the families of the cane workers. I spent two weeks in November , 2005 and two weeks again in 2007 traveling with the teams of American and Dominican mobile clinic doctors and nurses. The teams from CHOP were there to treat children, primarily. The Dominican health care providers treat the entire population as they are able. They now, with help from the Clinton Foundation are operating an AIDS clinic in Consuelo.