Maternal Health Clinic

Santa Ines Medical Clinic

Reaching out to those hardest to reach in rural Nicaragua

Dooley Intermed’s medical assistance programs in Central America began in 1985 assisting with the care of sick and wounded refugees living in impoverished conditions of ill health and starvation in Honduras.

The Coco River region of Nicaragua is populated predominantly by indigenous, semi-nomadic, subsistence-farming populations that are widely dispersed over a vast and remote geographical area. This represents a significant challenge for the provision of sustainable health care services to these disenfranchised minorities. This and other factors have resulted in this region’s suffering from some of the worst health indicators in Central America.

Dooley-Intermed provided support for a small 30 bed hospital in a village called Rus Rus located in northeast Honduras on the Coco River which is the dividing line with Nicaragua. Dooley-Intermed physician Dr. Maria Compte lived and worked in Rus Rus as the Medical Director for 5 years, mostly on her own, holding daily clinics, delivering babies, doing minor surgery, training midwives and nurse aides and traveling up and down the Coco River by dugout canoe visiting remote villages.

Dr. Compte returned to Nicaragua in 1991 to establish an aid program for a small clinic in the town of Waspam across the Coco River from where she previously worked in Rus Rus Honduras. This clinic has been managed continuously by a dedicated order of Catholic nuns. Dooley-Intermed provides ongoing support to this remarkable Santa Ines Clinic.

Dooley-Intermed’s cooperative program with the Santa Ines Clinic in Nicaragua has 3 primary objectives:

1) Supporting the Clinic in the Village of Waspam, which consists of an out patient department, 10 in-patient beds and a modest clinical laboratory.

2) Coco River and Inland Outreach Program; Visits are made at regular intervals to Coco River Villages, as well as inland areas examining and treating villagers, and evaluating those who may need evacuation to the Waspam clinic or a municipal hospital for further diagnosis and treatment.

3) Maternal and Child Health Education and Nutrition Program; focusing on the preventive medical services of immunizations, early detection of malnutrition, family planning, cervical and breast cancer screening. Health education classes are held regularly for mothers, pregnant women and caregivers.

In goes without saying that this clinic is a genuine “lifeline” to all the area residents.  In the longstanding tradition of Dooley-Intermed, healthcare workers from the Santa Ines Clinic still travel by boat and occasionally by dugout canoe to remote villages along the Coco River to provide medical treatment to those who are too sick or too poor to otherwise seek medical help.

Your donations make a genuine difference.

$ 10 provides prescription medication and antibiotics for a patient
$ 50 provides needed medical supplies for the Clinic
$250 provides a full week of hospitalization, treatment, and medicines