National Nurses United

set off on their solidarity brigade to the First Garifuna Hospital. For the next nine days, they shared experiences with the community, treated patients in the hospital and in their homes, attended profes- sional trainings, and were wel- comed by the vice-rector of the Cuba-based Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), Dr. Eladio Valcárcel, and anthropologist Santiago Ruiz, director of the UNAH's campus in Tela (a community with a large Garifuna popu- lation). They ate local cuisine such as baleadas, casave, and freshly caught fish; danced to traditional punta music; and learned the importance of speaking to patients in their own language. Having learned a few basic phrases in the Garifuna language, students were able to demonstrate respect to the bilingual Garifuna population, and found that esteem and affection was reciprocated in the warm reception they received from the community. The brigade was a life-changing experience for the university stu- dents. "I am grateful to all of the participants in this project, including those who are here and those who donated resources without think- ing twice," wrote nursing student Vivian Rochely Suazo Chavarría. "I want to stress something very important: In the past, I believed that creating a public health system…required a centralized strategy that would be impossible to implement in rural areas, but having seen the application of this model in a community like Ciriboya which is so remote and abandoned by national politi- cians, I have had to question my deepest assumptions. We cannot wait for Hon- duran healthcare to change systematically from above if we are not working as broth- ers and sisters toward economic and sci- entific progress at the community level. As a nurse from my country, I am called to visit communities like this and others like it to help make profound changes at the roots of our society. It's about organizing, planning, and having the will to make change. It's about moving from a curative to a preventive model, from hospital- based care to community care. This is why I don't want to be stuck and impotent in an urban hospital without ever even see- ing the homes of my patients' families. Now more than ever I am ready to get my hands dirty however and wherever I need to, in order to give my best to our people." In June 2014, I accompanied Geglia and organizers of the UNAH student brigade to Ciriboya to present numer- ous public screenings of Revolutionary Medicine in Havana, Cuba. There, stu- dents also presented the preliminary results of their hemoglobin study and solidarity project. Student brigade members continue to work to strength- en ties between UNAH and the Ciri- boya Hospital, and conducted a second follow-up trip to the hospital in January 2015. In this phase of the collaborative project, they are helping local doctors to create a genetic map of the community to further help the hospital in its efforts at disease prevention. And for students, as Rochely Suazo indicated, the lessons learned from Ciriboya go above and beyond the idea of providing "service" to a historically excluded people. Today, their primary goal is to work in solidarity with Gari- funa nurses and doctors toward a model of universal, free quality healthcare nationwide. Here in the United States, there is much to be learned from the struggles of students, nurses, and communities affected by the same global forces that are harming patient health and nurses' ability to provide adequate healthcare here. Community models for health- care, like in Ciriboya, show us that even with minimal resources, it is possible to reject the profit motive and provide healthcare with dig- nity—dignity for both the patient and the healthcare provider. The willingness of Honduran nurses to risk their own lives to fight for their patients, even while earning less than survival wages, is not that far from what nurses face in U.S. hospitals that fail to adequate- ly protect them from the threat of Ebola. And the enthusiasm with which my Honduran nursing students embraced the idea of health- care as a human right that must be fought for and won is a reminder to continually mentor young nurses everywhere. Adrienne Pine is an assistant professor of anthropology at American University and the author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras. D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 4 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 19 Clockwise from opposite page: Honduran nursing students made the 14-hour journey by bus along unpaved roads to First Garifuna Hospital; students observe a nurse doing intake of a patient; the student brigade pauses for a photo of a life-changing trip.

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