Ecuador is located on the Pacific coast in the North West area of South America. Its unique and heterogeneous ecology is determined by the presence of the Andean mountains which divide the country into three main continental habitats: the Andean zone with mountains as high as 6,000 meters above the sea level, the coastal area with its subtropics and the Amazonian rainforest.  Additionally, the country encompasses one of most important ecological niches of aquatic flora and fauna in the world, the Galapagos Islands.

The variety in flora and fauna, climate and soil, and culture and ethnicity determines a diversity of disease problems in a small geographic area. This phenomenon of heterogeneity in the incidence and prevalence of diseases is evidenced in the presence of malaria, Chagas disease, and leishmaniasis foci in the coastal subtropics, as well as the presence of tularemia and bubonic plague foci in the Andean zone.           

Consequently, in this proposed training program our students from Hispanic serving schools will have the unique opportunity to experience the maladies that affect these three completely different ecological areas in the context of three different cultures. Moreover, they will be able to observe the provision of health services at the primary level in the rural clinics and the tertiary level at the urban hospitals. In other words, our students will experience all this variation in culture, ecology, health services complexity, and disease in their field experience.  Indeed, this will be a valuable experience when these future health professionals will provide services to immigrants from all regions of Latin America. Furthermore, they will be also skilled to provide services to travelers to these regions.      

This training, with a focus in the areas of Tropical and Infectious Diseases and Global Health, will be carried out at the Bio-Medicine Center in Quito, and the three following geographic area satellite health clinics:

1. In the coastal subtropics our students will observe clinical cases of tropical and infectious diseases in the Saint Domingo of the Tsachilas Hospital and the BioMedicine Center satellite clinic. In these satellite stations, the students will also be able to observe the healing process carried out by the Tsachilas’ shamans who have been recognized for their ancestral knowledge of herbal cure.  

2. In the Amazonian rainforest, our students will be based in the Arajuno clinic that provides services to the local communities belonging to the Shuar ethnic group and the Tsachila ethnic group.  The Shuar group is well known for its ancestral shamanic practices.

3.  In the Andean zone, the training will be carried out in the Zumbahua Hospital located 3,000 meters above the sea level. In this area our students will not only see the clinical and epidemiological profile of diseases of the Andes, but also, they will experience a cultural interaction with the Quechuas, direct descendants on the Incas.