This is the face of an Everyday Hero: Health & Help Ambassador Bernadita Buffoni Tardella. She’s an ordinary person doing extraordinary things whose sole superpower is her commitment to affect positive change – right here, right now.
When Bernadita was a 15-year-old watching “House” and “Grey’s Anatomy” she knew she had found her mission: helping people in need.
For the last 10 months Bernadita has been giving the gift of life at Health & Help’s clinics in Nicaragua and Guatemala: feeding malnourished children, providing pregnant mothers with vital prenatal and delivery care, treating diabetes and other curable chronic diseases and helping people of every age live better, longer, healthier lives.
Like just last week, when parents arrived with their four-month infant – his lungs filled with liquid, unable to breathe:
“I knew this baby and his family because they always come to our clinic,” Bernadita says. “When I saw the baby I realized we didn’t have time, and our treatment would not be enough. I called a doctor from Chinandega to bring an ambulance as close as he could, but it never came. This community has no cars, so the baby’s mother and her friend just got on her motorcycle and took the baby to a city where someone could find them a hospital. It’s sad the public health system of Nicaragua didn’t have an ambulance to help its people, but I’m glad we have our clinic where this family could come all the way to us – by horse – and bring their child to us so we could start to help him.”
Building trust, Bernadita says, is almost as critical as the medical care she provides.
“This family understood the importance of going to a bigger hospital because they trusted me,” Bernadita said. “After 10 months working with Health & Help here, I can now solve so many more problems more quickly and efficiently because I have more experience with patients, and they are getting used to me.”
You can be a Health & Help Hero too by making a one-time or monthly donation, or donating medical supplies through our website: he-he.org.
And, you can follow in Bernadita’s footsteps and volunteer!
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