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When Omayra Abrego was 19 years old, her feet started to swell. Soon afterwards, her knees became inflamed, followed by her hands and elbows. Within months, the once healthy young woman with thick black hair and wide brown eyes had become immobile, unable to bend, stand or lie down.

Omayra’s parents didn’t know what to do or where to turn. They are Ngabe-Bugle, Panama’s most impoverished and populous Indigenous group, and the family of eight lives in a wooden hut with a thatched roof made of palm leaves in an isolated village known as Wari, located high in the mountainous rainforest.

The nearest hospital is three hours away and, to get there, Omayra must be carried in a hammock down slippery, steaming jungle hills, crisscrossing rivers along the way. After multiple visits to a hospital on Panama’s Caribbean coast, the Abregos say they reached a point where they didn’t have any answers or a diagnosis for Omayra’s deteriorating condition.

It was then they contacted the Floating Doctors.

The Abregos knew of the Floating Doctors – a group of mobile volunteer doctors, medical professionals and students offering healthcare services to rural areas – from residents of La Sabana, a nearby Ngabe-Bugle village that is one of 24 communities the organisation serves.

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