In the long term, the real impact on the state of community health must come through the training of local health promoters and community health campaigns. It is Sheaf/Espiga’s goal to improve the state of community health as follows:

H1: Expansion of Colama Project to Other Communities:

For several years, students from the local medical school have attended the community of Colama, in the Department of Managua. The students have completed a community survey and a diagnosis of disease in this poor community.

The students began in Colama where they have trained 5 community health promoters now competent to diagnose the most common health problems, make referrals, and mount sanitary campaigns. Their training – and follow-up by the students – has a direct impact on approximately 590 people who live in the community.

The pattern has been duplicated in three other communities: Norwich (Dept. of Chinandega), Las Lagrimas (Dept. of Boaco), and Nakawe, Nindiri (Dept. of Masaya.) While these communities are much too small to appear on the above map, their departments are clearly shown.

Sheaf/Espiga proposes to train an additional 20 health promoters. To train the 20 promoters will require approximately five workshops. Each workshop costs about CDN $700, including: transportation from their homes to the field for those providing the training; meals in the village and lodging; and basic training materials. The total, then, comes to about CDN $3,500 per village.

Sheaf/Espiga hopes to expand the coverage to an additional seven communities, each home to about 70 families. We hope to have an impact on the health of over 2,150 persons.

 
While the cost of expanding the programme varies slightly between different communities (mostly depending upon the distance from the medical school, from whose student body the trainers of the promoters are drawn to travel), approximately CDN $3,500 will allow us to provide medical care in one additional village.

H2: Providing Medications to the Moravian Clinic, Managua

Even basic medical care and medications are far too expensive for many Nicaraguans to afford. Ways of making some essential services and medicines available have been developed, otherwise many people would have no access to health care.

The Moravian Church in Nicaragua reaches into remote native communities where it often provides the principal social safety net. It thrives especially along the impoverished Atlantic Coast of that country. In the capital, Managua, there is a relatively large congregation ministering primarily to people from the Coast who find themselves displaced into the city. Many of these people are desperately poor. The Moravian Church in Managua serves these people through a clinic attached to its church there. (http://www.moravianmission.org/partnerprovinces/nicaragua.phtml)

For a number of years, several people who were employees of The Presbyterian Church in Canada working in Central America and who are now involved with Sheaf/Espiga have had a mutually enriching relationship with that church, and especially with this endeavour. Formerly, that involvement was of a personal nature, but now our hope is to build it into Sheaf/Espiga’s activities.

Sheaf/Espiga’s goal is to appeal to Canadian congregations for contributions to supply “physician travel packs”, containing a varied collection of excellent medications at a nominal cost. These can be obtained from Health Partners International, another Canadian NGO, which provides approximately $5,000 worth of medicines for the nominal cost of $500. Sheaf/Espiga hopes to appeal to local congregations to cover the costs of the medications; the packs would then be carried directly to the clinic by travelers on Sheaf/Espiga sponsored projects and tours. The Clinic dispenses them under the supervision of a physician at no cost to the neediest patients.

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