Information on Primeros Pasos

Location and Services

Primeros Pasos is a small clinic located in the Palajunoj Valley of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. The mission of the clinic involves providing primary healthcare to children through adults, health education programs, outreach mobile clinics, dental services, a woman{s health educator program, and a soon-to-come woman's health clinical program. All services are very low cost and medicine is free.

Our Patients

The clinic serves children and adults from from the 14 districts that make up the Palajunoj Valley. Patient's can be seen as walk-in patients most of the day except, when we are doing the physical exams for the school groups that come through the clinic. When the students come, each receives a complete check-up, a stool sample analaysis, a health education class, and a dentist visit. The school children come into the clinic by grade. We see one grade (or about 30-40 students) every day, except for Friday because Fridays are vaccine and wort removal days. Each grade in every school of the 14 districts comes through the clinic.

Laboratory

The lab is very basic. The clinic provides pregnancy tests, urine dipstick tests, glucose monitors, and microscopes for stool evalution via wet-preps with normal saline. If you want to learn more about what we find in the stools samples, check out the post entitled "A Whole New World"...there are some fun pictures there!

Pharmacy

Most of our pharmaceuticals are donated, but we also make weekly trips to a pharmacy to buy the basics, like acetaminophen. If you want to learn more about the specific medicines we use, look for a future post entitled "Pharmacia"

Common Diseases Here

1.) Skin (usually related to parasites)
-piojos (lice)
-sarcoptiosis (scabies and/or bedbugs...no distinction is made here)
-ongos (fungal infections, especially tinea corporis,tinea capitis, and tinea versicolor)
-candidiasis
-vericella
-herpes simplex
-warts
-impetigo
-acne
-Kawasaki Virus
2.) Gut Parasites (see "A Whole New World")
3.) Chronic Illnesses
-diabetes mellitus, type II
-conestive heart disease
-obesity
4.) HEENT
-foreign body (especially garapatas, a type of tick)
-acute otitis media and otitis externa
-upper and lower respiratory track infections (many people cook inside using open fire, and they so are constantly they are constantly exposed to the smoke. Pneumonia is very common)
-tuberculosis
-pharyngitis
5.) Other
-burns
-malnutrition (both kwashiorkor and marasmus)
-biliary stones
-UTIs
-STIs (syphilis is quite common)

Website for Primeros Pasos

http://www.primerospasos.org/