So that's that, 1 month later, 26 awesome new friends and a unique culture discovered. The AimOverseas study tour of the Mexican public health system concluded on Friday February 13, as roses and balloons began to fill the streets for Valentines day.
In our final week site visits included; a children's hospital and community healthcare centre. The private children's hospital was confronting. In contrast to seeing the 3 births 2 weeks ago, the 4 floors of sick children and babies was upsetting. One 2 year old girl had a scar running the vertical line of her entire torso due to heart surgery. Other babies were in quarantine suffering from an infectious skin disease, whilst 2 young boys waited for kidney surgery.
On Thursday we visited a community healthcare centre. The centre provided family planning, nutrition, breast feeding and general health advice to the local population, with each social worker attending to approximately 500 families. The services are free to those without private health cover. the daycare centre was a happy room, adorned with bright cartoon characters and artworks. The main issues in the community are nutrition, violence and drug or alcohol abuse.
The final 2 days of the study tour involved presenting our group reports on a topic of interest, focussing on the Mexican public health system. Our group of 3 presented a research report on nutritional issues in Mexico, and we discovered there are many. Mexico is currently number 1 for rates of obesity and diabetes. 78% of the population now live in the city, transitioning from manual labour and traditional diets to sedentary jobs and fast food. The power of corporations including Coca-Cola and Dominos pizza also dramatically impacts the politics and culture of Mexico. Mexicans are the biggest consumers of soft drink, at approximately 1 liter per person, per day consumed. The president of Coca-Cola for Latin America became the President of Mexico in 2000 and saw that Coke took over Pepsi as the highest selling soda.
After sad farewells to our Mexican host families and newly made Australian friends, I have arrived in exotic Cancun with 2 other girls from the study tour, ready for a much needed week of relaxing and recuperating, before the next chapter begins into South America!!
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