While the joy of serving children and youth includes keeping a close watch on them to ensure their sustained holistic development, it also demands constant vigilance for potential threats. Coming from at-risk situations, those risks, particularly relating to their health, can quickly turn into a razor’s edge for our children.

“We have a visiting Service Team member from Seattle with a cough, fever, and a sore throat,” said the voice of one of our school directors reporting the issue via phone to Vic Trautwein, Country Co-Director of Kids Alive Dominican Republic (KA DR). Having hosted hundreds of visitors over the years to KA DR programs, and knowing how under normal circumstances travel and weather changes can be punishing, Vic might not have been too concerned. But that call was in March, and Dominican Republic had just reported its first case of COVID-19, even though at that time it had not been recognized as a pandemic-level threat in the Americas. COVID-19 still seemed distant, fuzzy, and transient.

Our forward-thinking health care team had already begun to spruce up the health care systems to ensure the protection of our 2,000 plus children and several hundred staff. But the call, like an alert from God, propelled our efforts into high gear and we switched operation into emergency mode. We urgently put into place precautionary policies and measures while fleshing out details. Handwashing and hygiene protocols went into immediate effect, followed by designated quarantine rooms and the development of educational material for all our schools. Those early decisions put us in the driver’s seat to stay ahead of the COVID-19 curve while responding to the unfolding crisis. We even got ahead of the Dominican government’s response to the epidemic! Two weeks later, the Dominican government ordered all schools closed and sealed the island from visitors.

We sealed our residential homes and quarantined all our residential children and workers on their campuses. Ever since then, our health care workers have been working diligently in various ways to protect our students, their families, and our staff from COVID-19.

These health measures paid off: all our residential kids at the time of this update are in good health. We are so grateful to God for honoring our decisions and actions.

All of this couldn’t have been possible without a robust health care team. We are blessed today to have a team that includes a pediatrician, nutritionist, five nurses, three dentists, and a medical student that help care for the over 2,000 children and youth in the 10 Kids Alive programs. But until a few years ago this was little more than a dream. “I recall a few startling events many years ago,” remembers Vic Trautwein. “A visiting dental team pulled out 114 infected teeth from the youth at one of our schools, and the family of a seven-year-old student was asked to find a guarantor for $1,000 before she could have emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix. We realized that with better organization and effort we could preemptively save not just teeth but, in some cases, lives.”  Until a few years ago, better prevention, health education, good nutrition, and access to emergency care were only in the realm of possibilities, but now they are a pleasant reality for all our children.

Thanks to God and your provisions, the scope of medical services at Kids Alive Dominican Republic programs now includes:

  • First Aid capacity and local clinic relationships for each site
  • Regular dental care at four of seven schools with plans to add more
  • Menu assistance from our nutritionist at each site along with a supplemental program for underweight children
  • Assistance with chronic health conditions such as asthma and diabetes
  • Capacity for vision and hearing checks for each child
  • Educational material (including COVID-19 protection) for each site
  • Training of more than 30 of our workers in First Aid and CPR

Our goal is for every young person to leave our program with a healthy spirit, mind, and body,  having learned how to take responsibility for their own health.

An interview with Doctor Walkiris 

Dr. Walkiris Abreu currently assists with health care at Palo Blanco School. She was orphaned at a young age and grew up at the Ark while attending the ANIJA School, both Kids Alive ministries. Last year, she graduated from medical school and became a licensed physician. This year, she has helped extensively in our Palo Blanco School while awaiting assignment to a government position in medicine (which she recently started).

How have you helped at Palo Blanco School in your time with Kids Alive? 

worked for five months this year as the school nurse in Palo Blanco and helped children with preventive health measures and treating allergies and skin-related problems like scabies.  

What is something that you like about your work helping at-risk kids? 

I like helping in all ways and being able to give a little [back] from what I have received. I like being able to help children with both medical issues and spiritual needs. I can help them get better physically and know more about God and Jesus.  

Could you tell us about a specific child that you have helped recently?

A fouryearold child had a bad case of scabies. I was able to help this child, then help treat the sevenyear-old brother as well as their mother and father!  I was also able to help diagnose a case of asthma of a 14-year-old girl who had problems breathing after gym class. She is doing much better now that she has a diagnosis and has an inhaler to help when she has difficulty in breathing. 

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