When Vicky Guzman de Luna returned to El Salvador from medical school abroad, her proud family pictured her in a fine office in the city. Decades later, thousands of desperately poor Salvadorans are alive and well because Dr. Guzman chose instead to work in the countryside.
In those decades, Guzman has raised life expectancy and quality of life in hundreds of mountain villages, working without fees to serve people who have never met a doctor before.
Guzman has fought not only malnutrition, polluted drinking water and other scourges of the rural poor, but warfare as well. Year after year of violence has put her and the people she serves in danger and brought political persecution to the good doctor.
Unable to fathom her altruism, the army sent soldiers to follow her from village to village, but they were so moved by watching her work that they volunteered to help. Civilian officials have harassed and even imprisoned her; her clinic has been looted.
Through it all Dr. Guzman has kept on keeping on. She trains paramedics and "community health promoters"—most of them women, in a society where women have had few rights or positions of authority. She's helped villagers understand and use the banking and legal systems; she's set up environmental programs to conserve soil and promote appropriate technology; she's brought in scholarships, birth control, and eye glasses.
Whatever the people of the mountains need, la Doctora is there, listening, helping them see the way to better lives.
Update: In 2007 ASOPROSAR was serving over 90,000 people designated to be in "extreme poverty" or "severe extreme poverty." Dr. Guzman also served marginalized residents of the city of Santa Ana, and has set up free clinics in other towns and cities. Dr. Guzman has served as national director for Habitat for Humanity, helping the poor build houses for themselves.