Hillside Staff

The work that we are doing now in southern Belize is possible because of the Hillside Health Care International.  Everyday, one of us has a team who sees patients in our main clinic in Eldridgeville, outside of Punta Gorda and the other one takes another team into one of the remote villages to set up clinic there.  We have 6 - 8 medical students, 3 pharmacy students and occasionally a couple of physical therapy students that rotate with us for 4 weeks at a time and are the extra hands in the work.  We also occasionally have short-term providers like physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners who volunteer anywhere from a week or more.  (Although as it heads into winter in the U.S., we have had a lot of inquiries from people who would like to volunteer during January or February!).   We also have a  physical therapist, pharmacist and nurse from the U.S. who are volunteering here for 1 year each.  Our nurse works with us (Bill has mainly taken this role) to care for our 50 - 60 homebound patients around the Punta Gorda area.  Our pharmacist helps me keep our pharmacy running smoothly.  She and I are working right now on a system to keep our pharmacy stocked with a very basic formulary from donated medications and ones that we can buy inexpensively from other organizations that provide medications at lower costs to mission clinics.

None of this would be possible without our Belizean support staff who are with us day after day.  Because the organization is small but we are covering a huge geographical area as well as large patient base, many of them are crossed trained to check blood pressures, draw blood, translate for Q'eqchi' or Mopan Maya and act as a liaison for us in the Maya villages.  They work with us in our main clinic but at least 2 accompany us everyday on mobile clinics into the villages - even the handful of clinics we do every month that require an overnight trip, sleeping on the floor without electricity or running water.  Wages are not high in Belize when compared to the U.S. but jobs in the Toledo district are scarce and they all seem very thankful to work for Hillside.  One of the goals of Hillside is not only to provide a few jobs for the local people but to provide training as well so that they become qualified to provide excellent healthcare to their fellow Belizeans.  Hillside is currently paying for Alva and Alfia to take an online pharmacy tech course from the U.S. (it is not available in Belize) so that they will be certified.  Floracita has recently completed hands-on training with our physical therapist and is now doing restorative therapy work with our homebound patients.  Jennie is in nursing school on a scholarship from Hillside with the understanding that when she finishes her degree, she will come back and work at Hillside for at least a few years.  Victor did well on his high school exit exams and has expressed that he would like to be a physician.  We have started talks with him about Hillside providing a scholarship for his university coursework which is required to apply for medical school (there are very few Belizean doctors but the government does pay for them to be trained in Cuba if they qualify).

Last week the president of Hillside's board and our Stateside director came down for the week to see how things were running now that we have taken over as the medical directors.  It is nice to report that they thought things are running as smoothly as they can in a third-world country with limited resources!  At the end of the week, they provided us with a rare treat of lunch out with all the staff and spending a couple of hours together away from clinic duties.  Hopefully these photos will allow you to better envision our team here in Belize.

Hillside Staff (left to right)
Top Row:   Victor (clinic intake and translator), Everett (head of maintenance), Annette (physical therapist volunteer)

Back Row:   Randy (night watchman), Rudy (driver and community liaison), Celia (nurse volunteer), Amelia (housekeeper), Leslie (clinic intake and driver), Bill, Angela, Alva (pharmacy supervisor and tech)
Front Row:   Joyce (clinic administrator), Polly (administrative assistant), Alfia (clinic intake, supervisor and translator), Floracita (physical therapy tech), Carmelita (clinic intake and translator), Jennie (clinic intake, translator and nursing student)
Not pictured:  Natalie (pharmacist volunteer) (she is the Caucasian woman in blue scrubs at the far end of the table in the first photo)

~Yes, Bill does joke that he came to Belize so that he would not feel so short~