Ambulatory Medical and Dental Clinics
Fundación Retoño in Uruguay has built and operates modern Ambulatory Medical and Dental Health Clinics at the Espigas Centre. These clinics are fully financed by the Foundation and they provide free and easy access to health care, education and prevention to more than 400 babies and children who attend Espigas and their close relatives, comprising a population of over 200 families.
With the implementation of this project, the Foundation complements its objective of contributing to the formal education of its children, with a health care and prevention programme. Undoubtedly, this endeavour shall be decisive in the lives of hundreds of children who live in the Puntas de Manga area, one of the most deprived neighbourhoods of Montevideo’s outskirts.
Fundación Retoño has a service contract with Urgenterap Medical Clinic, an organization officially approved by Uruguay’s Ministry of Public Health, with a long standing and proven experience in the field. Urgenterap is responsible for the Clinics’ management as well as providing the medical staff and other support personnel in charge of medical assistance in these health centres. The professional staff includes an Odontologist, a Pediatrician, a General Physician and a Gynecologist. Two students from 5th year of Medical University are in charge of the nursing tasks.
The Clinics provide the following services apart from the regular medical and dental consultations: free of charge medicines, free of charge lab analysis as per doctors' requirements, distributions of breast milk substitutes as appropriate and whooping cough vaccination.
Different educational workshops are held in the Clinics such as Health Education, Sexually Transmitted Diseases Prevention, Nutrition during Pregnancy, Importance of breast feeding, Oral Health, First Aid, Birth Control Methods and Healthy Eating Habits among others. Since 2012, all Espigas' children's mothers are encouraged to follow preventive health practices at the Clinics such as gynecological checkups, Pap tests and birth control, including distribution of contraceptives.
Those cases that exceed the scope of primary medical assistance provided by the Clinics are redirected to the appropriate health care institutions.
The medical staff’s work is closely linked to that performed by Espigas’ Professors, Teachers, Psychologists and Social Workers. This allows for a multidisciplinary approach in the treatment of cases derived from the different projects functioning at Espigas.
