If you thought your foot that was injured while playing soccer was broken or that your child’s cold had turned into pneumonia, you would visit your doctor and expect an X-ray. What if you couldn’t get one? It is overwhelming when you think of how many people are currently living without access to X-ray services. After all two-thirds of the world, roughly 4 billion people, is a lofty number. WHITIA’s goal to bring these services to those in need of it may seem daunting but we are excited to see the impact it will have on health statuses around the world. As true of any organization, WHITIA needed a pilot site, a clinic that would receive our first recommended imaging solution to begin our global initiative.
We quickly realized that while selecting one site at one clinic would greatly improve the clinic’s imaging situation, it would hardly fix the country’s limited radiological services. WHITIA would need to look at the X-ray requirements of the entire country to better understand the needs of the individual clinics. Guatemala was chosen as WHITIA’s pilot country initiative for many reasons but mainly because the country of Guatemala is in need of X-ray services. In Guatemala City alone there are five municipal health clinics, all of which do not have X-ray. This is largely due to a lack of funds focusing on health care infrastructure, an issue the government is directly addressing by trying to improve their public hospitals. The most common needs for X-ray in these clinics are infections of the lungs, a leading cause of death in Guatemala, and traumas. Digital X-ray will impact the community by ensuring, as well as speeding up, diagnosis and treatments for health problems such as acute respiratory infections (ARIs), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tuberculosis, pneumonia and trauma.
Guatemala is also an ideal site for WHITIA because it is close to home. This allows for frequent contact to ensure the proper amount of support is available and allows WHITIA to take a very active role throughout the installation process. Remaining involved during and after the installation is a key differentiator of our organization and helps ensure our clinics are receiving a complete and sustainable solution for their imaging needs.