ISL has received an award of recognition from the Ministry of Health of the Mexican State of Sonora for enabling them to more than double the vaccinations and health screenings provided in underserved communities in the Puerto Penasco area.
At a luncheon held on May 15, 2015, ISL was presented with an award for making a considerable contribution to community wellness over the past year. Thanks to the assistance of ISL volunteers, the ministry of health was able to reach 55% of area children in 2015, up from only 22% in 2014. As part of the May campaign, ISL volunteers were trained and certified by Centro de Salud community health workers and given official health care worker badges from the State of Sonora. They then went door to door to provide vaccinations and health screenings for children in the “ejidos” (slums), an area in which the Centro de Salud has previously lacked sufficient resources to visit.
In addition to being thrilled by the dramatic increase in number of children reached, Birbaum is excited to see the ISL model of community care used so successfully: “We did this using our ISL zone model. The success of this campaign proves the value of taking the time, expense, and energy to go house to house in carefully planned zones as a means of triaging a community, as has been our ISL model.”
Vargas noted that the key to the success, in his opinion, were the nurses and nursing students.
As an organization, ISL is honored by this recognition and thankful for the volunteers and staff that made this success possible!