Preventing disease depends on addressing root causes.
AMOS mobilizes health promoters and community volunteers to regularly monitor the most vulnerable patients, increase access to clean water, educate about proper nutrition, and prevent the spread of tropical diseases. Through addressing these underlying causes, we prevent health complications, water-borne illnesses, malnutrition, and more.
Home Visits
One motto we live by is that everyone is counted because everyone counts.
Health promoters and health committees maintain a detailed community census so they can identify where the most vulnerable people live, including pregnant mothers, newborn infants, children under five years old, and patients with chronic diseases. To prevent illness and health complications, health promoters make monthly home visits to check in on these vulnerable patients to monitor how they’re doing.
Clean Water
Few homes in rural Nicaragua have access to clean, running water.
To prevent water-borne illnesses that cause diarrhea and contribute to malnutrition, we work alongside community members to install water filters and educate about clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. Thanks to our supporters and numerous mission teams, we have brought access to clean water to almost 50% of the rural communities we serve.
Healthy Food, Healthy Habits
In rural villages in Nicaragua, many families struggle to put nutritious food on the table.
To prevent child malnutrition and chronic diseases like hypertension and diabetes, we educate on the importance of adequate nutrition. We train our health promoters to test children for anemia, monitor child growth and development, and distribute nutritious food and vitamins to the most vulnerable people in their communities.
Preventing Tropical Disease
Mosquitoes are the most deadly animal in the world.
Soon after the Zika outbreak occurred in Latin America, AMOS partnered with Sustainable Sciences Institute (SSI) to strengthen the role of the community in promoting behavioral change and preventing the spread of mosquito-borne tropical diseases. Since 2016, community health volunteers trained by AMOS have conducted home visits to more than 1,000 of their neighbors to educate about dengue, chikungunya, and Zika, and help identify and eliminate mosquito breeding sites in and around local homes.