Update on Ayudame a Escuchar

 

May 2, 2022

 

I want to give an update to our club’s hearing mission to Guaymas and provide a little information on the program to our new club members.

 

The program started as a fact-finding mission spearheaded by Albert Olivier, MD, a cardiovascular-thoracic surgeon, who was the program director for the Mesa Baseline Rotary Club, Mesa, Arizona.  The program was titled “Arizona-Guaymas Rotary International Medical Project”. The program took place from December 3-6, 1992 and the site of the mission was Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, a small city of approximately 130,000 citizens located about 450 miles south of Phoenix, Arizona.  Guaymas is the Sister City of Mesa.

 

A proposal for a hearing program was set forth with the objective of conducting a clinic to medically assess patients, treat minor ear disorders, conduct hearing tests, provide amplification with hearing aids and consult with local school personnel on aural rehabilitation in the school system.  The team would be composed of audiologists, otolaryngologists and bilingual speech pathologists. Knowing that many of the patients would have sensorineural hearing loss and that the need for amplification would be great, a program that would emphasize sustainability in terms of service and product was anticipated.  Therefore, continued funding of the international program over time was a primary concern.

 

Over the years, forty audiologists and physicians, twenty-five Rotarians and over 200 doctoral-level students have participated in the program since 1992. Over 5200 patients have been seen and over 3000 hearing aids have been fitted to both children and adults.

 

I will be happy to send you a more complete version of the history of the program. Please see my contact information below to request a copy.

 

The Covid epidemic forced the stopping of the missions in 2020.  In conversations with Guaymas and Alamos program volunteers, Guaymas Rotarians and school officials, I recently found out that the school where we conduct the clinic had been broken into 26 times since we left in November 2019.  While the robbers mainly took metal (copper pipes, electrical wire, metal cabinets and doors, chainlinkfencing and plumbing fixtures from bathrooms, our equipment which we store in a sound booth used for testing hearing was left untouched other than to have boxes broken into and items strewn about.  The school principal, in his wisdom, had taken 87 hearing aids that we had left behind to his home. He also took hearing aid batteries home.

 

The school restarted in February 2022.  It had been closed because of Covid, lack of water and electricity.   The city of Guaymas has had major damage to the water and sewage system with raw sewage being discharged into the streets of some local communities.

Because of governmental restrictions on travel to and from Mexico because of the Covid pandemic, it was determined that we would not conduct clinics until we were allowed into Guaymas and the safety of our volunteers and the patients could be reasonably assured.

 

The best humanitarian programs contain a provision for creating sustainability, empowering local professionals through training and monetary support to continue the missions.  Efforts to create sustainability in Guaymas have been thwarted by the lack of highly-trained medical professionals in the area and, to some degree, lack of interest by local officials. Only 17 openings are available per year to train medical audiologists in Mexico.  Although the need for hearing healthcare is great, other more serious medical problems often receive more attention in developing countries.

 

In 2022, efforts to restart the clinic were begun by training an audiometric technician in Alamos in the hopes that more missions (four to five a year) could be conducted on a more frequent basis but smaller scale in Guaymas.  We are now trying to create a more sustainable model to provide the Guaymas patients with better access to services using local staff with occasional assistance from smaller teams of professionals coming down from Arizona. The demand for audiology services is still great as we have many existing patients in Guaymas and continue to identify new patients each time we conduct a clinic. The Mesa West Rotary Club of Mesa, Arizona and the Guaymas Rotary Club are still committed to the program.  By training more hearing healthcare volunteers (technicians and medical doctors), we hope to keep the mission going into the future.  Other hearing clinics in Alamos and Navajoa have been established over the recent years and we hope to join them in creating a network of hearing clinics to serve the citizens of Sonora.

 

I hope that the Mesa West Rotary Club will continue to support our efforts to create a sustainable mission in Guaymas.  We need to take a different approach to providing assistance.  I believe that we need to encourage training of local audiometric technicians in Guaymas, provide occasional teams to provide this training and see more difficult patients and continue to provide hearing aids, earmold material and batteries which are items that are necessary to the program but are difficult and expensive to obtain in Mexico.  We may take a team of 10 to 15 volunteers annually in the fall.  Overall, the annual expense to the club may be reduced in half by adopting this approach.

 

I would be happy to entertain any questions regarding the program.  My email address is ithanktheemost@gmail.com and my telephone number is 602-370-2057.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

Bob Jensen