Three or so months into our adventure in the development of a CUDA health program within the city district of hunter and we are slowly building traction.
As it seems with all programs and projects started within a Developing country dictate that all things take a while to ‘develop’. Our presence is growing in the health centre. This is positive and encouraging given the nature of health centres, changes happen frequently and people come and go but people are learning our names and bit by bit we are making connections with all the staff and nutting out ways of collaborating and improving health outcomes. We are currently solely working in the area of Diabetes diagnosis and prevention (which, to be honest is an excellent place to start given the nature of diet and health practices in Arequipa). We fill out simple forms with people and do a simple test to uncover potential diabetes. However by far our most useful and potentially far reaching aspect of our program is Education on nutrition and lifestyle for the prevention of diabetes for which has received very positive reaction from patients. We have currently seen 130 patients and lead to the potential diagnosis of 4 patients (of which we refer to the Doctors in the centre). These are humble beginnings but there are a lot of exciting opportunities to come.