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Since 1975, rural health nurses, or RHNs, have been traveling through the backcountry of Belize in rickety ambulances and borrowed pick-up trucks, administering vaccinations to pregnant mothers and young children.
"Rural health nurses are important because there are many people unable to get to the hospital," said nurse Elita Herrera of Bellmopan Hospital's mobile clinic. "It is important that we cover our women and children to keep out the transmission of disease."
Mobile clinics target parents who do not have the economic resources to get to a hospital. All services provided through the Public Health Department by the mobile clinics, with the exception of a child's first blood test, are free including vitamins, antibiotics and vaccinations. Children receive vaccinations for hepatitis B, polio, whooping cough, diphtheria, influenza B, measles, mumps, rubella and tuberculosis.
RHN's often play the role of health police. A part of their day consists of finding mothers who have not kept up with their child's vaccinations
"We do not leave their house until they bring the baby out," Herrera said.
Check-ups are often administered out the side door of the ambulance, on front porches, wooden stages, or if the nurses are lucky, a dusty, hardly used room within a village's public health clinic or community center.
The mobile clinics travel all over the El Cayo District, from Teakettle to the Guatemalan refugee village of Valley of the Peace. Two of their biggest obstacles on these routes are a lack of supplies and time. Herrera often works without gloves, and, on a recent visit to Teakettle, she and one other nurse vaccinated 68 children in two and a half hours.
"It's stressful and I need more time," Herrera said, "but I love my job."
-- Yvonne Malch