In 2017 Health Goes Global partnered with Floating Doctors, an organization in Bocas Del Torro, Panama. Floating Doctors sustainably serves Ngabe communities, indigenous to the archipelagos of Panama. Poorly charted waters and rugged terrain, political factors, social disenfranchisement, poor health knowledge, poverty and lack of infrastructure separate these communities from access to medical care. The Floating Doctors medical team was formed to answer these challenges to health. They deploy medical teams by boat, packhorse or on foot to these remote underserved areas.

Our pledge was to keep their clinics stocked with medical examination gloves to prevent transmission of diseases within the clinic - a place of healing. According to the World Health Organization, hand to hand contact is the number one method of transmission of disease. By providing Floating Doctors with medical examination gloves we assist in preventing the spread of many contagious dermatological and blood borne pathologies from patient to provider, or vice versa, during clinic.

Protecting these medical volunteers ensuring they are able to continue serving those in need. Likewise, these gloves protect the Ngabe people from the possibility of contracting a pathogen carried by volunteers from all over the world.

High risk transmission encounters include

• physical examinations

• blood pricks for blood sugar checks

• urinalysis

• pregnancy tests

• ultrasound exams

The remoteness of clinics makes personal protection of the utmost importance. If contamination should occur it could take hours to reach a main land hospital for one to undergo necessary treatment and testing.