Traveling doctor brings healthcare to remote areas of Argentina | Health

A rural doctor travels miles on a donkey through unforgiving terrain, enduring cold, rain, wind and exhaustion, to visit dozens of families spread across the highest mountain in northern Argentina.

Dr. Jorge Fusaro has organized medical trips through Cerro Chani in Jujuy three times a year for the past four years. Chani is considered a sacred mountain by the indigenous Kolla people who live there. It has extreme temperatures and snow-capped peaks all year round, and is home to symbolic animals such as the puma and the condor.

Fusaro is not only the only doctor that many people see, sometimes he is also the only outsider.

Doctors may be the only representatives of the state to reach this mountainous region. There are no schools, police or postal services. Fusaro not only treats the residents and leaves enough medicine for their first aid kits, he also helps them with bureaucratic paperwork, acts as a postman to deliver important documents to relatives in the city and organizes training, among other things.

“Knowing that our medical work has given these communities a better life fills my heart. If we don’t go, no one will,” says the 38-year-old doctor. He fears that government cuts will make future trips impossible. He has already had to cancel one trip due to lack of financing.

For some people, his arrival marks the first time they have seen a doctor. They are surprised that he keeps coming back.

It is almost noon and the sun is beating down almost 3,600 meters above sea level in Ovejeria, a settlement where only 67-year-old Dona Virginia Cari, her husband Eustaquio Balderrama and their son Panchito remain.

In a thatched kitchen, Fusaro chops onions and peels potatoes to help Virginia prepare lunch. He asks her about her daily chores, her animals, her husband’s health, the weather, her children who live far away and her medicinal plants.

“My idea of ​​sharing is essential. Making the most of the short time we spend in the communities and trying to live like them; if we have to chop wood or walk for hours to get water, we do it,” he said.

“This way we understand their efforts and concerns, their knee or back problems. If they have no bed and we have to sleep on a sheep’s skin, we will do so; if they only have soup in the evening, we drink soup. This helps us think about medical solutions within their capabilities and everyday life.”

Virginia says it’s important that she and her family see this rural doctor a few times a year.

“I am very happy when I see the doctor arriving on his mule. He brings the medicine that we have been taking here for months,” she said. “Working with animals is tough; we are old and our bodies ache.