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POPULATION: 111,211,789
ACTIVE IN: Baja California, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Guerrero, Jalisco, Mexico City, Michoacán, Nuevo León,
Oaxaca, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Zacatecas
PROGRAMS: Disease Prevention, Community Health,
Emergency Response
A CAUSE FOR CONCERN
Mexico is the fifth largest country in the Americas with a population of almost 109 million people where almost half of the country’s citizens live on less than $2 per day. Seeking a better life for their families, many migrate to Mexico’s urban areas, especially in the border states, only to end up living in makeshift communities that lack basic services like water and sanitation. This rapid urbanization has created unique, daunting challenges in the border region. Families living in these conditions suffer from poor health, and diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are far more prevalent along the border than elsewhere in the country.
IN 2008, PCI’S MOBILE HEALTH CLINIC REACHED 6,000 CHILDREN WITH SERVICES SUCH AS IMMUNIZATIONS AND GROWTH MONITORING. | OVERVIEW
Project Concern International (PCI) has helped improve the health and well-being of populations on both sides of the U.S. and Mexico border for over five decades. PCI’s early work in Tijuana, in the 1960’s, included building a maternal and child health hospital to meet the needs of impoverished families. With support from the Mexican government, the hospital became self-sufficient, and in 1982, PCI’s Tijuana staff created a local affiliate to provide basic health care to families in need. Today, this organization continues to care for people with few resources.
DISEASE PREVENTION
Globally, one out of every three people is infected with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). One out of ten will develop an active form of the respiratory disease, which is highly contagious and can be fatal. Even though the disease is curable and its spread is preventable, nearly two million people die from TB worldwide annually.
Through PCI’s SOLUCION TB program, which is employing ACSM (Advocacy, Communication and Social Mobilization) strategies, PCI is reducing the number of people who die of TB and significantly increasing the number of people who are fully cured within the priority municipalities across Mexico, which together make up over 65 percent of TB cases in the country.
Through SOLUCION TB, PCI is part of a worldwide effort to implement an innovative yet highly effective approach called Directly Observed Therapy short course (DOTS). At the heart of this effort are PCI’s committed promotoras, or community health workers, who are connecting directly with people, personally, in their own homes and communities. They successfully deliver TB medications to the patient’s door, watch them take the medicines, educate them about TB transmission and the consequences of not completing treatment, encourage them to stay committed, and provide a wide array of support to the person infected with TB and his or her family.
In addition, PCI is working to position TB high in the political agendas in Mexico, promote a person-centered approach to TB control, and help increase cure and detection rates. By providing technical assistance to the Ministry Of Health on expanding advocacy, communication, and social mobilization activities across the nation, the project is increasing adherence to treatment and decreasing stigma and discrimination. PCI also works with San Diego County in a bi-national TB control project providing DOT services for American citizens living in Tijuana, Mexico.
COMMUNITY HEALTH
True to its roots, PCI maintains its commitment to providing community-based healthcare for poor families living in Tijuana, Mexico. Through a network of dedicated volunteer health outreach workers, promotoras, PCI sponsors nine well-baby clinics through Medicina Social Comunitaria (MSC) (Community-Based Public Health) for Tijuana, which are a focal point for promotora networking and training sessions. Volunteers educate mothers about nutrition, breastfeeding, reproductive health, and strategies for preventing childhood disease. Children and mothers alike can also receive vital immunizations and health check-ups at the local community clinics.
In 2008, PCI joined forces with Sempra Energy Mexico and successfully launched a Mobile Health Unit to help people living in impoverished communities access to critical health care. The mobile health van is providing prevention services such as growth monitoring and immunizations to children under five, and expanding PCI’s reach in poor neighborhoods throughout the Tijuana region that are particularly vulnerable to disease.
In Autosplice, an assembly plant in Tijuana, PCI is carrying out a health information project for its workers. The project is funded by the company and it provides its employees with opportunities to learn about four priority subjects: nutrition to prevent obesity; diabetes prevention and control; heart disease prevention and prevention of violence against women.
In addition, PCI collaborates with the State of California with funding from the Public Health Foundation Enterprise, to implement a bi-national syphilis elimination project, helping prevent this still highly prevalent sexually transmitted disease (STI) and helping track potential contacts for referral and treatment. PCI is also a member of a bi-national committee for HIV/STIs San Diego/ Tijuana, working to raise awareness about the disease and its prevention, and helping put HIV high in the bi-national health agendas.
EMERGENCY RESPONSE
In response to the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) outbreak in spring 2009, PCI worked alongside leading international and domestic health organizations in Mexico and the U.S. Specifically, in Mexico, PCI provided over 60 clinics across 6 states of Northern Mexico with clinical supplies for health workers dealing with suspected cases of H1N1, as well as critical information distributed via Spanish-language brochures on how to prevent infection and care for the sick. Utilizing its experience with public health and other large networks of partners, PCI also collaborated with the Mexican Ministry of health to design a nation-wide intervention to mobilize households, communities and health providers to slow the spread of future waves of H1N1 and mitigate its impact.
Download PCI/Mexico Country Fact Sheet (PDF)
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