Fostering New Emergency Care Capacity in Mexico

It’s been a month since I get to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. San Miguel de Allende is a very beautiful colonial town surrounded by mountains and where the arid weather turns the landscape into a painting. Here the people are very friendly and nice and everybody has a reason to be happy and to have fun. They love their national days and they pay great tribute to their historical heroes.

Here I am working with an organization called PACEMD where the director is Dr. Haywood Hall, my Ashoka Fellow. PACEMD is a Continuous Updating Program in Emergencies and is intended to educate health staff such as emergency physicians, general physicians, obstetricians, gynecologists, nurses and other specialists in this field, as well as personnel involved in pre-hospital care and the community in general, in addressing medical emergencies. PACEMD organizes several courses, including: First Aids, BLS (Basic Life Support), ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support), BLSO (Basic Life Support in Obstetrics), ALSO (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics), PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support) and FAST (Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma).

The main objective of my work with PACEMD is to collaborate with the ALSO program (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics), developing and maintaining the ALSO network of providers and coordinating activities both amongst the PACEMD training sites and with other similar organizations in Mexico and internationally. I also have to implement the ALSO program in rural areas throughout Mexico. And the major, long-term objective will be to scale the program throughout Latin America.

I've participated in some ALSO courses. ALSO is a course that provides practical tools and systematized knowledge to resolve obstetric emergencies. All participants are very satisfied and the course has been very helpful to them to resolve issues quickly and accurately, based on reported experiences for themselves.

I must say that I am very happy to be in this wonderful country and working with an extraordinary team led by Dr. Hall, who is someone I admire as a tireless seeker of altruistic goals. I am grateful for the opportunity he is providing me to learn with him.