El Salvador Clinic

Clínica Integral de Atención Familiar

In October 2003, AmeriCares opened its first international family health clinic, the Clínica Integral de Atención Familiar, in Santiago de María, El Salvador. The clinic provides quality health care services to underserved families.

More than one third of Salvadorans live below the poverty level. Rural communities suffer poor living conditions and a lack of extensive public health care. Water pollution and contaminated soils from toxic waste disposal continue to be a problem.

The AmeriCares Family Clinic services 120,000 people. When it first opened, the clinic treated 66 patients per month. Today, on average, the clinic sees 1,800 patients each month. It is a full-service clinic for all family members. Patients receive a wide range of high-quality medical services including general medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, dentistry, clinical laboratory testing, ultrasound, X-ray and mammogram, as well as pharmacy services. Each patient receives the same level of care at an affordable cost, on a sliding scale.

The clinic’s dedicated professionals are local doctors, registered nurses, licensed technicians, a psychologist and a dentist. They work from a 9,000-square-foot building equipped with modern technology. The clinic supplements a secondary level hospital and a health clinic in the same region.

In addition to onsite care, the clinic’s medical staff conducts community outreach activities for local schools where children, parents and teachers are taught how they can live healthier lives. They have introduced courses on problems facing adolescents and countering domestic violence. Topics have included oral hygiene, breast feeding, and the clinic has offered a disease prevention initiative to help diabetics learn how to manage their condition.

The Clínica Integral de Atención Familiar opened under an agreement between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and AmeriCares as part of USAID’s Earthquake Recovery Program. Under this agreement, the clinic was jointly funded by both organizations through September 30, 2004. AmeriCares now assumes all operating responsibility for the clinic. The clinic will continue to be supported through donations from individuals, corporations and foundations in El Salvador and the United States.

AmeriCares has distributed more than $286 million worth of medical supplies in El Salvador. AmeriCares began delivering humanitarian aid to the people of El Salvador in 1986. It was one of the first international aid agencies on the scene when an earthquake struck in January 2001, killing more than 800 people. AmeriCares returned just a month later, delivering additional medical supplies, tents, clothing, food and emergency supplies when two more devastating earthquakes shook the country.

The smallest country in Central America, El Salvador is situated in a location extremely susceptible to hurricanes and at a high risk for earthquakes and volcanic activity.