Through the clinic, needy patients not only receive direct medical care but preventative screenings for cervical and breast cancer as well as other medical testing. This is a program taken into villages and poor neighborhoods in cooperation with local churches. Most of these areas have no access to medical care or health education. As women wait for screening, they receive basic health presentations and instructional videos. The gospel is also communicated through puppet shows, devotional talks, and sharing God’s love and mercy one-on-one. Many women have placed their faith in Jesus Christ through this program.

A second program carries out school assemblies throughout the city of Cochabamba on the topics of sex, abortion, and abstinence. Introducing teens to the Author of life, Jesus Christ, is always a central part of each presentation.

Another program, Entre Amigas, or Among Friends, helps single mothers choose life for their babies instead of abortion. Along with parental training, counseling, and discipleship, this program also helps the mothers finish their education and some type of technical training so that they can support their children.

When the coronavirus reached Bolivia, little attention was at first given beyond the basic quarantine restrictions of other countries. The official rate of infection and death remains extremely low with only 150,000 confirmed cases and 9000 deaths since March. But these figures reflected the grim reality that most Bolivians had access to neither COVID-testing nor health care, so they simply didn’t show up on official reports.

The true extent of the virus became apparent by July when in just a five-day period police collected over four hundred bodies of COVID victims left abandoned in the streets. The hospitals became so overwhelmed they began shutting their doors and posting signs that read: “There Is No Space.” Funeral homes and cemeteries stopped accepting burials. Medications, lab tests, chemotherapy and radiation for cancer patients, and virtually every medical supply were in short supply or not available at all.

When the coronavirus reached Bolivia, little attention was at first given beyond the basic quarantine restrictions of other countries. The official rate of infection and death remains extremely low with only 150,000 confirmed cases and 9000 deaths since March. But these figures reflected the grim reality that most Bolivians had access to neither COVID-testing nor health care, so they simply didn’t show up on official reports.

The true extent of the virus became apparent by July when in just a five-day period police collected over four hundred bodies of COVID victims left abandoned in the streets. The hospitals became so overwhelmed they began shutting their doors and posting signs that read: “There Is No Space.” Funeral homes and cemeteries stopped accepting burials. Medications, lab tests, chemotherapy and radiation for cancer patients, and virtually every medical supply were in short supply or not available at all.

All of which propelled Elijo La Vida Ministries in a new direction. Their medical team has been able to make home visits to many pastors, church members, and missionaries all across the city of Cochabamba who contracted COVID, supplying treatment, medications, oxygen, and other essential supplies. They also consulted by phone with at least fifteen to twenty new coronavirus patients a day, eventually supervising a total of more than two hundred-fifty COVID patients.

One sizeable group to which the Fernandez minister are children with cancer. More than twenty of these patients contracted COVID, which meant that their entire families were quarantined. Simply tracking down medications and ensuring the children and their families have food has been a major undertaking.