Life Changing Medication
Operation Blessing International Launches Nationwide Anti-Parasite Initiative in Guatemala.
By Carl Setterstrom, 04.01.05

Trinidad Castellon is a young mother with seven children and no real income. They live in a small village in Guatemala called El Jurgahon. Their home is small, with only two beds and not much more. The house is without plumbing or running water. The only place they can get water for bathing, cooking and drinking is more than a mile away in a contaminated well.

"We do not have clean water, all of us here do not have clean water,” Trinidad said. "One has to carry the water on one’s head, one must bring the containers of water on one’s head, not only on one trip, to fill a barrel we have to make ten trips."

After making many long, heavy trips water, it is still unhealthy. Their story is common to the Central American nation of Guatemala.

More than 90 percent of the school aged population in Guatemala is inflicted with intestinal parasites, making the children very sick, and sometimes even causes death. Contaminated water is the major culprit of this disease, along with malnutrition and poor sanitation.

To help control this rampant disease, Operation Blessing International (OBI) offered assistance to Castellon and others, by purchasing enough anti-parasite medication to eradicate intestinal worms in more than two million children.

In addition to providing the anti-parasite medication, OBI also reopened ten health care facilities in Guatemala that were closed for one to two years due to a lack of budget and medicine. OBI financed the hiring of nurses for these facilities and worked with local officials to bring care and medicine to disadvantaged areas.

OBI, a faith based non-profit humanitarian organization that provides relief and assistance to economically challenged people, has joined with the Guatemalan Ministries of Health and Education. The two organizations also paired with local and national leaders to make the distribution of the medication possible.

In February 2005, OBI President Bill Horan and OBI Guatemala Director Julio Cesar de Leon participated in a National Anti-Parasite Campaign ceremony to kickoff the program. Guatemalan officials and hundreds of schoolchildren attended the event.

"Through the anti-parasite campaign, children will be relieved of debilitating parasites, while local medical and educational staff will utilize program resources to promote long term health." Horan said. "Now these children will have a chance at a good life."

In local schools and villages, children are receiving the anti-parasite medicine. They will receive a follow-up dose six months later, to assure that they remain parasite free. Trinidad’s family went to receive the medications.

"[My children] were sick, I felt worried to see how sick they were; I did not know what to do. I felt very worried; it hurt so much to see them like they were. I was very afflicted because they were sick and I could not find what to do,” Trinidad said. “The medications are so expensive and being poor I cannot manage to buy them."

After receiving the medications, Trinidad said her children are is doing much better.

“I feel happy, I feel happy to see them, because it is sad to see a child in pain, there sick, just lying in bed, it is very sad; then seeing them play is a great joy,” Trinidad said. “I give thanks to god, for how nice he is, that everything one asks him from the heart, God helps.”