Esperanza's road: A tale of hope in La Guajira
In Colombia, a dedicated health worker with roots in the Wayuu community reaches children in remote communities with lifesaving vaccines.
June 11 2023
For children in La Guajira, Colombia, hope arrives on a motorcycle.
Esperanza is a 37-year-old community health worker with deep roots in Wayuu, an indigenous community in the far north of Colombia. Her name, which means 'hope' in Spanish, embodies her mission to bring better health and brighter futures to the people of her region.
La Guajira is one of Colombia's poorest departments with 75 per cent of residents struggling to access basic necessities. Water scarcity, unreliable energy, poor nutrition and a lack of access to routine vaccines contribute to the region’s alarming rates of childhood mortality. Yet, the commitment of a few dedicated individuals brings hope and the possibility to overcome hardship.
Commitment and sacrifice
Esperanza’s work consumes much of her life. In the area of Bahía Honda, where the Paraíso Health Centre is located, she is in charge of almost 100 communities, each with five or six houses. She knows their locations and the names of her patients by heart, and she speaks with families in Wayuunaiki, the Wayuu language, helping to build trust and foster close relationships.
Each night, Esperanza prepares to sleep in the colourful hammock she has hung in the outdoor patio of the health centre. During the week, the centre serves not only as her workplace but also as her home.
Esperanza initially aspired to be a teacher, but when she couldn't finish her studies, she trained as a nursing assistant instead. “I didn’t choose to become a vaccinator, it was an opportunity that came my way. After years in this job, I feel happy, and I really like working in vaccination, although it involves a lot of sacrifice,” she admits.
Every day, she sets off on her motorcycle, carrying a backpack, a cold thermos filled with vaccines and other health supplies like syringes, cotton, alcohol and gloves.
In the summer, the sun is intense and the roads where Esperanza works are deserted, uneven and winding. Come winter, the area undergoes a dramatic transformation with dry roads morphing into muddy, swollen streams that make travel long and difficult.
For Esperanza, the physical distance from her family magnifies the challenge. Each weekend she leaves the health centre and returns home to her family, riding rough roads for two to eight hours.
Balancing my work and family life has been very difficult for me, but every day I think I have to keep going for my children.
At home, her loved ones wait for her safe arrival: her two children, 8 and 12; her husband, mother, sister and nieces; and two teenagers she has taken under her wing.
In the words of Esperanza’s husband, Victor Hugo: “She is the pillar of this family. She is the one who worries about everything, household needs, livelihood. She is the leader of her community and of her home, too. She is the person who deals with everything here, who gives everything, who organizes.”
A foundation of trust
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Esperanza's role as a community health worker became even more crucial. She went door-to-door working relentlessly in La Guajira’s most remote and hard-to-reach areas to combat vaccine hesitancy and champion the COVID-19 vaccine within the Wayuu community—no small feat in a region where traditional beliefs and reliance on ancestral medicine run deep.
Her journey became even more arduous with the loss of her father to the very disease she fought against. "My father's death was the hardest thing for me," shares Esperanza. Yet, saying goodbye to her father only strengthened her resolve. In the face of adversity and grief, Esperanza's commitment to reach the children and families in La Guajira with life-saving vaccines only grew stronger.
Part of her strategy was to convince community leaders of the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine. The leader of the Puinaliru community, Rafito Palmar, recalls how the trust Esperanza gained through years of work and her closeness to the community were the gateway to vaccination.
“Most people in the community refused to be vaccinated. So, I, as the authority, asked Esperanza to vaccinate me to set an example,” explains Rafito. Following his inoculation, the community's skepticism waned.
The crucial work of community health workers
The work of vaccinators and community health workers like Esperanza “is important for UNICEF because it is what allows us to see what is happening in the territory, and to reach some of the hardest to reach children,” explains Tatiana Palacios, UNICEF Territorial Outreach.
The Paraiso Health Centre also has an agreement with the local hospital to provide outpatient primary health care services to the migrant population from Venezuela and to the Colombian indigenous population that has no health system coverage.
Esperanza excels in her role, earning universal praise from colleagues, supervisors, patients and the indigenous leaders with whom she works. Despite the challenging conditions of her territory, she consistently ranks as a top vaccinator each month and is proud of her achievements and the hope she brings to the families she serves.
"My dream is to see the entire population vaccinated and immunized against all the diseases out there. I feel like I save lives," says Esperanza.
This story was originally published in Spanish by UNICEF Colombia.
The generous support from the Government of Canada through the CanVax programme helped community health workers, like Esperanza, sustain their efforts and increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake rates.
