When EHA medical teams go out into the villages, they face an uphill battle. Due to limited education, low literacy rates, and long-held false beliefs, many villagers simply don’t understand much about diseases like diabetes or hypertension or cancer. They don’t know what signs to look for with diseases like these, and they certainly aren’t seeking regular medical checkups. Often they believe that these diseases can be contagious, so they avoid people who have been diagnosed, plunging those who are sick into isolation at the worst time.

So EHA community teams drive from village to village, providing testing and teaching people more about these diseases. They seek out those in leadership in the villages, including teachers and government workers, and provide training for them in what to look for and how to help people seek treatment. And when they find patients with life-limiting illnesses, the palliative care teams visit patients’ homes, meeting their physical, social, and spiritual needs. They are the hands and feet of God to these people. The charts below explain what they do and the results of their efforts. The articles that follow tell the stories of several people whose lives were changed by the care of EHA’s doctors and nurses.