Medical Care in the Peruvian Amazon

From the most remote areas of the Amazon jungle to the city slums of Iquitos, you can provide desperately needed medical attention and health education to a man, woman, or child in the Peruvian Amazon.

Each person that is seen at an Amazon Promise clinic is offered the opportunity to see a practitioner of Western medicine or a local traditional healer. Treatment is provided for their diagnosed condition, or a referral to a specialty clinic is made. In addition, dental treatment is offered at many Amazon Promise medical clinics, as are talks on HIV/AIDS prevention, hygiene, and sanitation. For most of Amazon Promise's patients, this is the only medical care they ever receive.

Amazon Promise uses both Western and Traditional remedies in their clinics. Traditional healing practices are used to cover a wide range of health problems, complementing Western medical techniques and often successful even where expensive Western treatments can fail. In addition, traditional healers are trusted members of the community, and people are confident in their ability to heal.

Traditional remedies and Western health education can combine beautifully to help achieve and maintain health. For example, by boiling water to prepare traditional medicinal teas, patients are helping to combat waterborne parasites. They're also drinking more water, which helps prevent dehydration and the serious problems that can be associated with it. Hand-washing can avoid the spread of sickness. Clinics provide oral rehydration salts (ORS), and instructions on how to use them, to each head of family; a simple life-saver if a young child or infant suffers fever and diarrhea.

You can help. Purchase of this Gift That Gives More™ funds medical care and health education for patients in the Peruvian Amazon.

Update from the Field

July 2017

Donors like you helped Amazon Promise send two specialized global health teams out in the field providing life-saving medical care and installing a rainwater catchment system in remote communities located at the headwaters of the Amazon River. This is the fifth rainwater system to be installed to date. Earlier this year the fourth rainwater system was installed in the village of Nuevo Loreto on the Yarapa River, with partners at EWB Sonoma. The timing couldn’t have been better as the river reached historically low levels this year, leaving everyone stranded in their villages with only stagnant water to drink. Thankfully, after the Nuevo Loreto installment, all three villages of the Yarapa River have clean water to drink.

Amazon Promise is a U.S. based, non-profit organization founded to provide desperately needed medical care to remote populations living in the Upper Amazon Basin of Northeastern Peru. Its Peruvian operations are headquartered in the jungle city of Iquitos. Amazon Promise provides medical services and education to residents of Iquitos and neighboring Belen. Additionally, since 1994 it has conducted routine volunteer-based medical outreach, local training, and education in thirty-two remote jungle villages.