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BY KEITH DOUGLASS WARNER, OFM, PHDAbout 21 percent of Mexico's population lives in rural areas, according to the World Bank, yet only 2.3 percent of the country's 259,000 practicing physicians work there. That may seem like an insurmountable problem to some, but to Haywood Hall, MD, a high-school-dropout-turned-emergency-physician, it was a perfect opportunity to found PACE MD, a program that aims to enhance health care delivery in Mexico.Mexico's fragmented health system with substantial but often poorly coordinated resources was crying out for someone to teach rural Mexican physicians, all of whom were fully qualified by their formal education but lacked practical training in emergency medicine. Enter Dr. Hall, who also recognized that many of the country's first responders would benefit from emergency medicine training.PACE MD, started in 2002, weaves together disparate players and processes to foster a more responsive health system, save lives, provide better care, and establish a more inclusive health care system. Working closely with local partners such as the Red Cross, PACE MD organizes advanced training workshops across the range of Mexico's health care providers and institutions, linking emergency medicine to public health. The organization has trained some 30,000 health care providers in emergency cardiac care and obstetrics over the past 15 years.I had the privilege of seeing PACE MD in action this past July during a PACE MD co-sponsored Advanced Life Support for ...
Source: Going Global - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs