What is H.O.W.?
Posted by Julianna Rose on Aug 10, 2016
That's what our members were curious to find all about at our August 9 meeting. Our speaker was Jose Antonio Jimenez Aguilar, President of H.O.W. (Health Outreach for Women). He was accompanied and assisted by Sylvia Flores of Centro de Desarrollo Jocotepec, A.C., and Olga Lara Aguilar, a registered nurse for the Ramon Garibay Hospital in Guadalajara.
The three of them spoke to a full house on the Mobile Maternal Health bus that travels to isolated villages every week, taking maternal health to locations that otherwise would not get any such help. H.O.W. is basically a combination of three A.C. organizations. They joined forces which makes the project stronger and far reaching.
The Mobile Maternal Health bus project, which is still fairly unknown, started in 2014 in Chapala and now serves seven remote areas. President Jose Antonio Jimenez Aguilar, an electrical engineer, drives the bus, and maintains the bus. He has two nurses that travel with him. All three are paid by anonymous private donors. Together they educate women and help them make choices about their health and family planning. The prevention of diabetes, the detection of lung diseases, cancer prevention, etc. are important issues. They conduct tests and bring the results back to the women. On Sundays, leaving at 7 a.m. and returning at 4 p.m. they take women up to Guadalajara for sonograms for 50 pesos instead of 450 pesos. For women who require further tests or treatment, appointments are made by the nurses who also negotiate good prices from doctors for any procedures needed. The three were saying that the women are eager to see them come and are happy and very appreciative about this new service. All the more because, whenever they had any help in the past, if at
all,they never got results from tests back, leaving them in the dark about their health issues.
Moonyeen King introduced the speakers
The bus
Women gathering for consultation
The group makes house calls too