EAPSEC project history

1985 - Responding to rampant disease and extreme poverty among Guatemalan refugees who had fled to southern Mexico to escape genocidal repression, five Mexican health promoters form the Equipo de Apoyo en Salud y Educación Comunitaria (EAPSEC, Team for the Support of Community Health and Education). EAPSEC creates a network of health promoters to work in the refugee camps, teaching community members basic first aid, showing them how to cure the most common illnesses, and explaining how to prevent future diseases by changing the conditions in which they live. As they succeed in improving conditions among the refugees, EAPSEC recognizes the need to extend their work to poor indigenous communities in Chiapas that suffer from comparable levels of poverty, malnutrition and disease.

1989 – Partners In Health begins working with EAPSEC, providing financial and medical support.

1994 – The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) leads an armed uprising in Chiapas, demanding an end to economic and social inequality and political repression of the poor indigenous population. The Mexican government sends troops to crush the rebellion. A precarious ceasefire is eventually negotiated, but not before more than 200 people have been killed. EAPSEC continues its efforts to train and support health promoters in communities that are now even more isolated from health care and other services than before.

1995 – The Mexican government and the EZLN sign an agreement to work towards peace, but indigenous poor people in Chiapas continue to suffer from killings and abductions at the hands of Mexican Army troops, federal police and paramilitary organizations.

2004 – With help from PIH, EAPSEC constructs, equips and opens a new clinic in the town of Amatán in the Northern region of Chiapas.

2005 – Hurricane Stan strikes Chiapas with torrential rains, triggering floods and mudslides that destroy villages and roads, driving thousands of people from their homes and leaving them cut off from food, clean water, and basic medical care. EAPSEC responds to the crisis by opening emergency clinics in two of the hardest hit communities, Belisario Dominguez and Honduras. A network of Community Health Promoters in over 20 communities affected by the hurricane in the Sierra Madre mountains begin to expand their impact. They conduct a demographic health survey, and physician-accompanied medical consultations, then provide ongoing follow-up for people with chronic diseases.  Efforts get underway to expand prevention and treatment work, begin a microcredit program and build physical infrastructure to support their activities.

2006 - EAPSEC continues to support and staff emergency clinics in Belisario Dominguez and Honduras, two of the communities hardest hit by Hurricane Stan. Staff also train 137 health promoters to work in 11 municipalities and 83 communities across four regions of Chiapas, serving an area of approximately 16,900 people. Initiating a South-South collaboration, EAPSEC and Socios En Salud, PIH’s sister organization in Peru, begin a Chiapas-Peru collaboration to share best practices for training health promoters.

2007 & 2008 - In response to the high rate of epilepsy in the town, EAPSEC provides the community with much needed medical and informational support. EAPSEC works with other NGOs to pilot MDR-TB treatment in the Chiapas district. Community Health Promoters receive rigorous training and have a new certification process.

2009 - EAPSEC works with D-Tree, a software developer, to pilot the use of mobile decision-support devices among CHPs. Continuing its strong advocacy work, EAPSEC lobbies the government for the creation of the Citizens Advocacy Center for the Right to Health and hosts to conferences to train CHPs in a variety of areas including information exchange.

2011 – To address the social determinants of health, EAPSEC expands programs on women’s rights and food security. Hundreds of women participate in new groups in which women can learn practical new skills, share ideas and experiences, and formulate plans for the future. EAPSEC also begins food security workshops to help address the “lean months” when food harvests and coffee income run low. These workshops include analysis of structural issues, as well as training in topics such as mushroom and small garden production.