Mexico: Healthcare Access for Latin America on a F650GSD

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I left California the first week of August. I went from Los Angeles to Tucson; an 800-mile ride across the dessert that lasted 12 hours. After riding in 110F (42C) temperatures, I opened my hydration lotion and I found it completely decomposed. It had turned from a bright white lotion to a pale yellow liquid. This was my first-hand experience on how a healthcare product went bad due to inappropriate storage.

After a bit of research I found out that the supply cold chains in most Latin American countries are in an advanced state of decay. Old, kerosene-powered refrigerators experience frequent downtimes due to lack of fuel and spare parts, new refrigerators experience frequent down time due to power shortages and inappropriate transport containers can expose goods to wide variations in temperature. As a result, temperature-sensitive healthcare products become spoiled, severely hampering efforts to fight infectious disease that are a persistent problem. The healthcare researched started right away and much to my surprise, most problems were obvious.

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When I finally crossed into Mexico I felt like a fish out of water. It felt awkward not having a place to call home, not having a bed to go back to, not having job to worry about. The everyday worries were gone and replaced by new ones. The main worry now was to stay alive. The road from Hermosillo to Creel gave a clear picture of what I was getting myself into. In my journal, I wrote “The ride was like driving in video game avoiding all kinds of animals: donkeys, cows, deer, snakes, squirrels, dogs, pigs, chickens etc. I was riding in a zoo. In addition, I had to avoid upcoming trucks in my lane in curves! Avoid rocks that had fallen on the road plus numerous pot holes that could have easily busted a shock.” The only difference from a video game to reality was that “game over” meant being dead.

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Riding south I crossed many little towns which where very fun to ride around. The roads were not clearly labeled and I ended up going the wrong way several times. I drove through streets that were closed to the traffic. One time I passed a tope (speed bump) and soon realize that it was not a tope. It was a road block to stop vehicles from entering the pedestrian market. I ended up riding through the market with everyone looking at me like a dumb foreigner or smiling at the big motorcycle. I soon realized that traveling with a fully-loaded motorcycle allowed me to get into pedestrian areas, skip traffic lines, go against traffic in one way streets and get escorted by police motorcyclist to my hotel among other things.
Riding the motorcycle gives many privileges, but those come with a price. I crossed into Mexico during the rainy season. It rained on me almost every day. One of the worst day was when I rode through Zinapecuaro in Michoacan. It began raining when I got on the bike in the morning, and it only stopped for a few minutes here and there. Due to the rain the streets started to flood and the flood covered the pot holes. The bike and I got covered in mud. Also, my helmet got covered with dirty water and I had to stop several times to clean it. Every time I stopped there was a car splashing me with water and soon after there was a dog that decided to chase me. It seems that Mexican dogs come out when it rains. Going through the flooded streets was an adventure; I never knew when I would hit a pothole. The whole trip got more complicated because there was construction in two cities that I went through and there where no signs indicating how to go around. I got lost several times and had to ask my way around.

It is hard to ask directions when the map and GPS are both wrong. On one ride, the map didn’t have enough detail, the GPS was not showing the roads, the map and GPS had different names for the closed by cities than the actual ones. There were some new roads that didn’t show up in either map or GPS and you had to follow the road signs to go west when you needed to go east. It was a mess and I got lost several times either when it was raining or when the traffic was super slow and I got all wet in sweat. On top of that, different people gave me different directions.
Mexico was ‘more’ than I have ever expected in particular because of the people. Many times I found someone who took me into their house. For example, one time I reached Seyba Playa which is outside of the City of Campeche. I rode across the Malecon, the main road in front of the ocean, without seeing any hotel. Almost reaching the end I saw a humble man seating under the tree. I asked him for hotels and camping. He said there where two hotels in town and that there was a beach where one could camp. The beach was open to the public and was not a designed camping area thus not 100% secure. After a couple of questions he told me that he was a fisherman and asked me if I would accept his invitation to go to his house to eat fish. My first impression was negative: yeah right go to your house and rob me. I realized that I was in a small town between gas and toll roads, and I had already spent $25 – almost my daily budget. So, I accepted the invitation. The man lived with his parents which made me feel more secure. We sat down to talk and minutes later his mother came out with a delicious fish and he went out to the store to get me a cold soda. When I was almost done eating that fish, she asked me if I would like to try another type of fish. I accepted since that day I had only eaten a small pastry in the morning.

While talking I found out that Juan Carlos the fisherman had just got married and was building a small mud shack on the outskirts of the small town. He told me that it didn’t have electricity but I was welcomed to camp there and take a shower in his parents’ house. I asked the same question a hundred times – is it safe? He assured me that it was safe but if I didn’t want I could stay at the hotel in town with was approximately $15. After debating, I decided to take the risk. He paid one of those motorcycle cabs to get there faster since it was getting dark. I rolled into this barrio with very poor people. Coming with the loaded bike which looks huge compared to the ones in town was a big attraction for the neighbors. It was a big attention-grabber,and attention was the last thing I wanted in this that part of town. I set up my tent inside the shack, tried to hide the motorcycle behind the shack and I went to bed with my knife next to me. The neighborhood was poor and I had gotten too much attention coming into the shack. I couldn’t fall asleep because I was worrying about what to do if someone came in to rob me. Then is started raining heavily with lots of thunder. No robber would go out with those conditions, and I felt asleep. Like Juan Carlos, I met wealthier individuals and motorcyclists that took me into their homes provided a comfortable and invited me to the best restaurants in town.
Mexico is probably one of Latin America countries where you see the most pharmacies in the streets. There are two franchise pharmacies almost everywhere. They are Farmacias del Ahorro and Farmacias Similares. They both claim that you can save up to 75% by buying your products there. However, almost every pharmacy on the streets boost up that they have the cheapest product. Not the most efficient, not the safest product, but their pharmacies have the cheapest products. What I found interesting is that many physicians are skeptical of the quality of the products sold by Farmacias Similares, which is the largest franchise in Mexico. Some argue that while saying Farmacias Similares claim to help the poor they have very defined criteria on where the pharmacy must be opened. They are not opened in the areas where medicines are needed the most, but where the pharamacy has the highest chance to succeed and studies now have shown the bigger purchaser is the middle class. In addition, their service model which includes an in-hosue physician prescribing their products might lead patients to buy a product that is not necessarily the best one for their condition.
I left Mexico after three weeks feeling that I needed to spend a lot more time there. It is definitely a country I’ll revisit!