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The Centro Médico Patient Fund!

Centro Médico’s mission is to help members of our communities lead healthy lives. As part of this commitment, we arrange and fund extensive and long-term treatment, including pace maker insertions, cancer treatment, dialysis, joint replacements, HIV therapy and more. As the needs of our patients grow, we need your help to continue helping them. Please make future care possible by adopting a patient through our patient fund. Learn the stories of individual patients and then contribute to the care of a specific patient.

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Bolivia: Evo Morales on the Daily Show

Blogs like Comunica Bolivia provided a bit of background information about the program in anticipation of the appearance. But see the full interview at the link.

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Centro Medico Humberto Parra

Centro Medico Humberto Parra strives to improve the health and well-being of poor rural Bolivian communities.

Centro Medico provides free primary healthcare, medication, health education and other health services to people who would otherwise not be able to afford them. The clinic works in partnership with the surrounding communities to enable them to lead healthy lives. Centro Medico is primarily staffed by volunteer American and Bolivian physicians and is entirely funded by private donations from Bolivia and the United States.

What's New?

May 17, 2009

Centro Medico has made it to NPR! A few weeks ago, Dr. Susan Hou and Dr. Mark Molitch, our fearless leaders, took to the airwaves on Chicago Public Radio to talk about the clinic on Worldview. You can listen to the piece here.

We've been lucky enough to land in the news a lot lately. Over the last few months, we've appeared in The Daily Northwestern, the Loyola Phoenix, and the Lawndale News. We hope you enjoy the press! Please spread the word!

Volunteers help fight diabetes and hypertension in clinic communities

Two summers ago, clinic volunteers and American medical students Lisa Jager and Sara Medendorp were out of bed before sunrise and tracking blood sugars and blood pressures before 7:00 am. Lisa and Sara, who had just finished their first year of medical school, visited the rural villages of Arboleda, Buena Vista and Yapacani every other week to combat diabetes and hypertension, two extremely common health challenges in Bolivia.

Centro Medico volunteers reach out to Bolivian teenagers through sexual health education

In July 2006, after spending three months in Bolivia, Sharon Hopkins, a Master of Social Work student from Nova Scotia, Canada, along with excellent help from American volunteer medical students Melissa Marinelli, Ben Gray, Lisa Jager and Lavinia Sinitean and clinic nurse Guinda Vallejos Guerra, delivered six sexual health education presentations to junior high and high school students in the towns of Yapacani and Buena Vista. The presentations were part of a sexual health project that Sharon conducted for Centro Medico Humberto Parra.

Matico? Clavo de olor? Sangre de Grado? Investigating Traditional Health Beliefs and Practices in Centro Médico’s Communities

What is matico or clavo de olor? What kind of a remedy is sangre de grado, or what does tree bark treat? These are questions that US volunteer and first-year Northwestern University medical student, Yuna Rapoport, is asking as part of a study on traditional health beliefs, remedies and medical practices in Centro Médico’s 11 communities.