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Friday, January 18, 2008
Breast Cancer in Latin America
An article in e-newsletter of El Hospital recounts the 22% increase in the number of cases of breast cancer and a 38% increase in the number of deaths in Mexico over
the past ten years. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer for women over 25 years old. Unlike
the USA, where women over 60 are most frequently diagnosed with breast cancer, in Mexico younger women are affected.
Women between 45 and 54 are more likely to present than older women.
The federal government has been promoting mammograms since 2002. Eighty digital mammography machines were
purchased in 2003. Whether the increase in numbers result from a greater incidence or more testing is not known.
An article in the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica on October 31 reported a similar increase in breast cancer in El Salvador. In El Salvador, however, there are not eighty
new digital mammography machine but only three at the public hospitals. Salvadorans who are not eligible for
the Social Security hospitals and can not pay for private hospitals must go to the public hospitals. There are 630,000
women over 40 (the at risk group) who are relegated to these facilities. These three machines can in no way handle mammograms
for more than 600 thousand women.
In some cases women have to pay for their own chemotherapy drugs becasue the public hopitals do not have
the budget. The poor continue to suffer unequally.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Twenty-two Prisoners Begin University Studies
The Director General of Prisons in El Salvador has told La Prensa Grafica that twenty-two prisoners completed
their high school education while incarcerated last year and have now embarked on university studies -- still in prison.
These new university students were among 258 new high school graduates. The new school year has just begun in El Salvador
and there are 6,323 enrolled in school just like those on the outside. Classes from primary though high school are available.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Church Stands with Immigrants of All Statuses
[Episcopal Life] As immigration reform eludes Congress and as resentment, hate speech and anger about the
issue build across the United States, leaders of the Episcopal Church are calling church members to stand with the suffering.
Undocumented
immigrants, disparaged as "illegal aliens" by some who want them out of this country -- and out of its schools, hospitals
and jobs -- present a moral dilemma for dioceses and ministries in every state. Raids at workplaces, and the arrests, detentions
and deportations that follow, devastate families and divide communities.
Employers who need workers find themselves
pitted against taxpayers who resent increasing costs of social services. This nation of immigrants, once proud to be a "melting
pot," now builds prisons and detention centers one after another to remove those it sees as a threat. "Hospitality is becoming
an endangered trait at the official level," laments Richard Parkins, director of Episcopal Migration Ministries. "We are developing
a culture of fear and suspicion. It permeates the community...and we begin to close our doors.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
IT IS COLD!
Many of us think of El Salvador as a warm (or hot) tropical country. It is true that nearer the ocean
it is almost always in the 80's or 90's in the daytime. Recently, however, a cold front blasted through the country;
3,000 homes were damaged by the winds and one woman was killed. Below is a picture from yesterday of boys huddled against
the 37 degree night in the mountains.
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