The Division of Global Health in the UBC Department of Family Practice and the Global Health Initiative are working with our partners at the St. Clotilde Health Centre, Peru on a multi-community nutrition survey, prompted by concerns uncovered in a needs assessment conducted last fall. The survey will be used to learn about commonly eaten foods, water access, sanitation practices, and details on the fish eaten in the zone. From this we will be able to test the most commonly eaten fish to see which (if any) are high in mercury, and will be able to calculate the risk to pregnant women in the region, and make guidelines specific to their situation.
UBC Division of Global Health (Dept. of Family Practice) and the Global Health Initiative have been partnering with the St. Clotilde Health Care Centre, which serves communities along the Napo River, Peru, for over 2 years, carrying on the legacy of Dr. Kerry Telford, who championed the program. (To learn more about Dr. Telford, St. Clotilde and the program, please click here. Each year UBC medical students, residents and volunteer physicians travel to St. Clotilde on elective placements. In the hospital they participate in supervised clinical service, but they also participate in the vaccine campaign serving communities all along the Napo River. On these trips the students travel with the local clinic staff to bring health services to rural areas. It is in both the town of Santa Clotilde and on these campaign runs that we will access the participants in the nutrition survey.
The survey is looking at fish specifically because there are a number of illegal gold miners in the area, which combined with deforestation have caused concerns about heavy metal content in the river, particularly mercury. Gold miners use mercury to separate gold from the river sediment, and deforestation causes mercury naturally present in the soil to run off into the river. Once there, mercury is bioaccumulated up the food chain in fish, and then these fish are eaten by people. The risk of mercury toxicity is greatest when pregnant women eat a high amount of mercury. Their unborn babies are then at risk of neuro-developmental disorders, and a range of physical defects such as hearing loss, vision impairment and tremors. In the communities along the NapoRiver fish is the primary source of protein, so a thorough understanding of the issue is needed before risk management can be undertaken.
This is a three phase project: Phase 1 is beginning now with UBC students heading down to St. Clotilde to interview 300-700 women on the next round of vaccine campaigns. Two more groups of students will return to these same women over the course of the next year. Our hope is to pay our own way on the vaccine campaigns (fuel costs of river travel), to provide an honorarium to our Peruvian project manager, and to thank our study participants with a small thank you gift of a bar of laundry soap each.
This is where you can help! Since we are going on 9 campaigns and hope to speak with 300 -700 women 3 times, we estimate the cost for Phase 1 to be in the area of 14,000 soles ($5,185.00 CAN).
Click here to donate now: St. Clotilde Peru Pango Project
After analysis and based on the results of Phase 1, we will be returning for Phase 2, which will involve testing the commonly-eaten fish for mercury levels. Phase 2 is more expensive as we need to purchase many fish and send them to a lab to get tested (at $50 a test). We estimate the cost for Phase 2 to be about about $7, 500 CAN.
In Phase 3 we will bring this information back to the communities along with recommendations to improve their diets in general. If the results of Phase 1 and 2 indicate a risk to the community – the commonly eaten fish test high in mercury – we will design an intervention. This and any general recommendations will incorporate what we have learned in the survey to make sure that they are realistic and culturally appropriate for the community. Phase 3 is where we bring this project full circle and provide the communities with the information and tools needed to make changes to their daily routines to improve the health of themselves, and their families, hopefully lessening the reason to go to the doctor. We don’t know how much this will cost yet, because we can’t predict what the outcome of the study will be!
The end goal of the three phases of this project is to sustainably improve the safety and well being of the people in the many communities along the Napo River served by our partners at St. Clotilde. Please donate today – your donations to the St. Clotilde, Peru Napo River Nutrition Study will help us to achieve our goal. Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about the project. Your donation will be marked for Santa Clotilde Centro de Salud, and you will receive a receipt for tax deductions.
Thanks to Carly Fletcher and Ben Wasserman for piloting the survey, and to Dr. Judy Mclean, Randy Baker, and Naseam Ahmadi for helping us design it. This weekend Chris Nixon-Giles and Nicole Smith travel down to Santa Clotilde, and their backpacks will be much heavier thanks to the the first 300 copies to be administered! Also, thanks to Pango Vancouver, who have provided a lot of insight and background for this project.
Sincerely, Videsh Kapoor, Erika Neilson, and Allison Heath
To make a donation, visit our donation page and click on the St. Clotilde Peru PANGO Project.
For questions about the project, please email: ubcmed.gh@gmail.com