To visit several dozen homes spread throughout Argentina’s highest peak in the north, a rural doctor rides a donkey across kilometers of harsh terrain, battling cold, wind, rain, and fatigue.
For the past four years, Dr. Jorge Fusaro has arranged medical trips across Cerro Cha i in Jujuy three times a year. The local indigenous Kolla people see Cha I as a sacred mountain. It features year-round snowy peaks, extremely high temperatures, and symbolic creatures like condors and pumas.
In addition to being the only physician that many people see, Fusaro is occasionally the only outsider. The only state representatives who might be able to go to this mountainous area are doctors. The postal service, police, and schools are all absent. In addition to providing residents with medical care and making sure their first aid kits have enough medication, Fusaro also assists them with administrative paperwork, acts as a mail carrier to transport critical documents to family members in the city, plans training sessions, and more.
It makes me happy to know that our medical efforts improved the quality of life in these communities. The 38-year-old doctor muses that if we don’t go, nobody will. He fears that future travel will be impossible due to government cuts. Due to financial constraints, he has already had to postpone one trip.
When he arrives, some people see a doctor for the first time. They’re shocked that he continues returning.
Only 67-year-old Do a Virginia Cari, her husband Eustaquio Balderrama, and their son Panchito are left in the town of Ovejer a, where the sun is blazing down at a height of approximately 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) above sea level. It is almost noon. Fusaro helps Virginia make lunch in a thatched-roof adobe kitchen, chopping onions and peeling potatoes. He inquires about her everyday tasks, her pets, her husband’s health, the climate, her distant children, and her medical plants.
Sharing is crucial, in my opinion. We try to live like them and make the most of our little time in the towns; whether we have to cut wood or walk for hours to get water, we do it, he said. In this manner, we are able to comprehend their efforts, concerns, and back or knee pain. We sleep on a sheep’s hide if they don’t have a bed; if they just provide soup at night, we sip soup. This enables us to consider medical options within their everyday lives and possibilities.
Do a Virginia claims that visiting this rural physician a few times a year is crucial for her and her family.
When the doctor arrives on his mule, I’m overjoyed. She remarked, “He brings the medications we take here for months.” Because we are elderly and our bodies hurt, working with animals is difficult.
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