The Floating Doctors: Mobile medicine comes to Panama?s jungles
When Omayra Abrego was 19 years old, her feet started to swell. Soon afterwards, her knees became inflamed, followed by her hands and elbows. Within months, the once healthy young woman with thick black hair and wide brown eyes had become immobile, unable to bend, stand or lie down.
Omayra?s parents didn?t know what to do or where to turn. They are Ngabe-Bugle, Panama?s most impoverished and populous Indigenous group, and the family of eight lives in a wooden hut with a thatched roof made of palm leaves in an isolated village known as Wari, located high in the mountainous rainforest.
The nearest hospital is three hours away and, to get there, Omayra must be carried in a hammock down slippery, steaming jungle hills, crisscrossing rivers along the way. After multiple visits to a hospital on Panama?s Caribbean coast, the Abregos say they reached a point where they didn?t have any answers or a diagnosis for Omayra?s deteriorating condition.
It was then they contacted the Floating Doctors.
The Abregos knew of the Floating Doctors ? a group of mobile volunteer doctors, medical professionals and students offering healthcare services to rural areas ? from residents of La Sabana, a nearby Ngabe-Bugle village that is one of 24 communities the organisation serves.
?When the Floating Doctors started coming to our home, I started to feel some hope,? says Omayra, now 25, her frame feeble but her voice robust.
After a few visits, the organisation concluded Omayra likely has juvenile idiopathic arthritis, a rare condition among children that causes inflammation, swelling, pain and stiffness in joints.
On the days the Floating Doctors come, the young woman?s parents, siblings and cousins gather in the family's dimly-lit wood-planked home and observe as the volunteers speak with Omayra about how she?s feeling and run a series of tests. During their quarterly visits, the Floating Doctors check Omayra?s vitals, such as blood pressure, oxygen saturation levels and pulse, listen to her heart and lungs with a stethoscope and test the flexibility of her joints to monitor if they?ve improved or tightened since her last checkup.
During a visit to her home on a hot, muggy day in June, Omayra complained of gastric pain, rashes on her skin and an itchy scalp. The Floating Doctors volunteers asked her to give detailed descriptions of her symptoms, tested her for lice and cleaned her infected, swollen knees.
At the conclusion of the hour-long consultation, the Floating Doctors gave Omayra paracetamol for joint pain, omeprazole for stomach discomfort, clotrimazole antifungal cream to treat her irritated skin, soap and a large box of rice, as there are limited options for food in the village.
?I do feel sad on most days,? says Omayra, who wears cotton dresses to ventilate her swollen knees. ?But when the Floating Doctors come to visit I feel cared for. I feel attended to. I feel happy.?
