In the United States, Canada, England, Europe, New Zealand and Australia people have hope for the future. I am not sure that's true for the Quechua. The mortality rate for children is shockingly high; four out of ten children die before they reach 10 years of age. Death from pneumonia, dysentery and infection are an everyday occurrence.
The most basic health delivery systems do not exist. Dental care is a luxury that is out of reach for many Quechua in the highlands. Low birth weight babies, cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, and diabetes are caused by oral infection, which studies suggest contribute to a wide variety of systemic diseases. The simple act of having an abscessed tooth removed is something a majority of Quechua families cannot afford. These untreated teeth turn deadly.
I was in Peru with the Quechua Benefit last year (November 2004) when a mother told me that her daughter had complained in June that her tooth hurt. The mother told the child, "don't worry the gringo dentists will be here in November." Can you imagine a circumstance where you would ask your child to wait five months to have their infected tooth pulled?
Dr. Mario Pedroza, Dr. Wayne Jarvis and the other dentists who travel with Quechua Benefit are often faced with a dilemma: which teeth to pull. The Quechua dental team tries to limit each patient to two extractions. This limit is forced on them because the lines of people waiting for care are so long that there would be no hope of getting through even a part of those in need if they stopped to extract every infected tooth. They have to practice a form of triage.
I have painted this dark picture from the everyday reality of the Peruvian people, who raise their alpacas in the harsh highlands of Peru. The images of colorfully dressed Indians, peacefully blending into the panoramic Peruvian landscape, that we often see in National Geographic or on the Discovery Channel belies the harsh reality of their lives. I once asked Lenora, a Quechua lady in the Colca, what she thought of the foreign tourists coming into her valley. She replied, "They come, they take pictures and they leave no money." I have often thought about what Lenora said, it occurs to me that between 1993 and 1998 we imported a fair portion of the animals that make up the foundation of a U.S. alpaca industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And, we left very little money in Peru.
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