New CKDnT Poster Displayed at Medical Conference
Last week medical professionals from kidney foundations around the world gathered in Mexico to discuss their role in emerging countries. La Isla Foundation was represented at the conference in the form of this wonderful poster created by the La Isla Foundation's Public Health and Communications teams. See a more detailed version here.
Evaluating, Improving and Expanding CKDnT Treatment: The Launch of our New Campaign
Greetings from León! { "projectids" : "14536", "ggtid" : "158781AE814A12F9EF2AE10F81100404" } Photographer Ed Kashi and I first met Jorge last January in his home in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua. Jorge was an esteemed member of his community: a little league coach, a liaison between his community and the mayor’s office, and a devoted husband and father. Jorge [...]
Growing Pains
My whole life my mom always told me I would be a lawyer, and my whole life I struggled with the notion of actually becoming one. Despite my best efforts, last year I found myself in law school. After my first year, I think I was still shell-shocked at the idea of being an attorney. [...]
Peritoneal Dialysis Visit Reflection
A few weeks ago, I went with the La Isla Public Health team to accompany two nurses on a home visit to a patient on peritoneal dialysis treatment. In Nicaragua, peritoneal dialysis (PD) is the only viable option for many patients with end-stage kidney failure from chronic kidney disease (CKD), but the quality and outcomes [...]
Why we Tell the Story
Summer 2010. Having spent a few months during college hitchhiking through the mountains of Nicaragua, taking in the breathtaking vistas from the back of a milk truck plucking along the rocky roads and listening to a man tell me stories of Contra battles that left the walls of his house still pocked with bullet holes, [...]
Partnerships and Moving Forward
Education alone may not be the solution to the CKDnT epidemic in Guanacastal Sur, Nicaragua, but while the cause is still unknown, education is the best bet in keeping the next generation safe and healthy. That’s why, for the past 6 months, LIF has been revamping the Community Development Department’s education and skills building program. [...]
This isn’t “normal” or inevitable: A community leader passes in Chichigalpa
We walked around for two hours in the dust, in the staggering heat, amongst a throng of other people all walking the same creeping pace. “It feels like being in a zombie movie,” I remember thinking to myself. But everyone was there willingly, to pay their last respects to a treasured community leader, father, husband, [...]
English Classes in the Community
A few weeks ago we started our English classes for the year in the Guanacastal Sur community. We teach 5th and 6th graders who are surprisingly attentive. They are much different than the rowdy little kid I was at that age. The first thing that took me by surprise was not what was inside the [...]
Katja and the Kidneys
I am studying for a Masters in International Health and needed more experience in the field, so I came to La Isla Foundation through random coincidence. I actually disliked the kidneys since my first year in med school and avoided to study in-depth their anatomy, physiology etc. What a mistake! It all came back to [...]