Brenda Marcos Juaréz
Brenda Marcos JuĂĄrez, a young mother who needed emergency assistance.
In May of 2021, COVID-19 restrictions were slowly lifting in Oaxaca. Unfortunately, that trend reversed dramatically, and, by early August, Oaxaca began to report peak cases not seen since mid-2020. Having said that, La ClĂnica is working within those restrictions to assure that those sick and in need will still receive quality and affordable attention. Here is the story of Brenda Marcos JuĂĄrez, a young mother who needed emergency assistance.
Brenda was born in San Juan ChicomezĂșchil, a village located in the Sierra Norte in the state of Oaxaca. Her grandparents, parents, and two brothers continue to live in the village, although her father passed away. Brenda left the village eight years ago and is now 32 and lives with her husband and two daughters, 6 years old and 2 months old, in Paraje la CiĂ©nega, Santa Cruz XoxocotlĂĄn. But now, Brenda is worried for her widowed mother, whose primary income was cooking for group events that have been canceled for the past year-and-a-half due to the pandemic.
Now in Oaxaca, Brenda is a domestic worker cleaning homes from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Her husband works odd jobs in construction. In the two homes where she worked for seven months while expecting her second child, the owners offered two meals to Brenda and her daughter. In exchange for these long hours, Brenda received 80 pesos, or $4 dollars/day, and no benefits since it is considered an informal job. Due to the lack of income, the family lived in a single-room home with electricity but no other basic services.
While they were barely making ends meet, Brenda started to have difficulties with her pregnancy. After visiting the gynecologist at La ClĂnica, he detected a cyst and complications for a natural birth. Therefore, she would need to undergo a cesarean to assure the health of the mother and child. In a private clinic, she would have had to take out a loan for nearly 15,400 pesos, or $760 dollars. This would take 190 days â 2,660 hours â to earn enough to pay back that amount without using one peso to care for her family. She shared with me that she had heard about La CĂinica from a friend who received quality attention and referred her there. Now she is very happy and grateful to receive the help she needed.
Brenda and her daughter are just one of the many families who are down to their last options, but thanks to your continued support of La ClĂnica, have more hope for a better quality of life. If you visit the TASH Website (www.tashinc.org) Impact page, you will see that the hospital is close to having reached 200,000 low-income patients, which is no small miracle!
