PROGRAMS: Overview • Medical Supplies • Clinics • Environmental Health & Services • Youth

Providing Water, Schools, Roads and Air Transport

• Water and sanitation
• Roads
• Air Transport

Water and Sanitation: Beginning in 2002, Mano a Mano created a new initiative, building on its success in mobilizing residents of rural communities to take positive action to address their needs. Through health education offered by their clinics, residents of these communities learn that lack of clean drinking water, absence of sanitation facilities and very limited variety in available food present serious health hazards.

These types of projects can be expected to have substantial impact on community health status by reducing the incidence of communicable diseases and improving nutrition:

1. Community sanitation projects involve construction of public bathrooms and showers near the community school. School personnel, working with clinic staff, and promotores take responsibility for teaching both children and adults the importance of using these facilities. Previously, the only bathrooms and showers in these communities were located in the clinics themselves.

2. Community water projects bring into the community a consistent water supply that has not been used for bathing, laundering or toileting. In most communities water is carried a considerable distance from a source that has been contaminated by multiple uses.

Communities are selected for these projects based on their successful participation in planning for and managing their clinic, identified community needs, demonstrated motivation to address these needs, and their geographic and population size in relation to available resources. Building on the partnerships developed during clinic construction, Mano a Mano - Bolivia staff work with villagers to develop innovative, modest-cost solutions to sanitation and nutrition problems.

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Roads: Through the generous support of an anonymous donor, Mano a Mano received funding for heavy duty equipment to use not only in building construction but also to improve access within clinic communities. To build the first clinics, villagers filled their burden cloths with bricks and carried them to the clinic sites because the area road did not exist. Not only do road improvement projects increase access to the clinic and its services, they connect communities to the world beyond their borders, expanding the capacity for economic development. Mano a Mano's partnership approach applies to road projects as well.

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Air Transport: To help Mano a Mano respond to medical emergencies and to make more efficient use of staff time, the Wagner Foundation donated funds in 2004 to purchase a six-seat, single-engine Cessna airplane. 

Mano a Mano uses the plane to airlift patients to the city for emergency care, to transport staff, volunteers and regional officials to and from remote clinic sites and to transport physicians to rural clinics to provide specialist services on weekends. 

The opportunity to use air as opposed to land travel literally saves weeks of staff travel time and makes it possible for Mano a Mano to reach more remote areas. Mano a Mano now has several clinics that are more than a ten hour drive from the city. In several instances patients who were airlifted would have died without surgical care that cannot be provided in their villages.

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