Alejandra Deza, a junior aerospace engineering major on her first Engineers Without Borders project trip abroad, was scouting storefronts in Veron, Dominican Republic, for a “ferreteria,” the local version of a Home Depot. She and two fellow participants from Virginia Tech University were looking for supplies needed to assess whether an ultraviolet-light water-disinfection system previously installed by university colleagues at a free clinic worked properly.
The clinic, operated by a university medical school, is the only one in this impoverished town of 20,000 serving its growing Haitian population, immigrants lured by construction and other jobs in the nearby Punta Cana resort on the island’s east coast. Patients lined up as early as 5:30 a.m. to be seen by medical personnel.