Humanitarian of the Year: Rebeca Villalobos – Guardian of the Needy

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica ­— As a 19-year-old school secretary for a Caravan of Goodwill school in rural Costa Rica, Rebeca Villalobos noticed that many children were failing their classes for lack of glasses. Still others were slowly going blind from eye ailments because they had no access to treatment.

“What I saw upset me,” Villalobos says. “But at the time, I really didn’t know how to help.”

It took 10 years for Villalobos to find her path. With $500 of start-up capital and a few borrowed chairs, she opened her first medical clinic in 1991 and began offering treatment for just $2 a visit. In those early years, often exhausted from the long hours spent serving the poor, her eyes would well up with tears as she let the last patient out the door at the end of the day.
Now, the unassuming 48-year-old seems almost out of place in the upstairs executive suite of a spotless ASEMBIS health clinic, located in northeast San José and one of seven such clinics in the country. From her dark wooden desk, she personally greets patients and visitors in a manner that belies her driven personality and the force behind the low-cost organization, whose name stands for Association of Medical Services for the Social Good.

“Rebeca has always had a vision of what she wants,” said ASEMBIS medical director Edwin Contreras, who has watched the clinics grow into a multimillion-dollar, self-sustaining enterprise that generates cash for expansion. “She persists and persists until she accomplishes [her goal,] which makes her a very strong person.”

Villalobos was raised in a single-parent household of modest means. She has no background in medicine; she doesn’t even have a college degree. Yet with donated time and money from doctors and former colleagues, it took her only 15 days to open that first clinic in San José, she recounted.

“Those initial days were tough,” Villalobos said. “There were days that we didn’t know if we could pay the people working with us. And there were times that I’d close the door at night and think, ‘I can’t do this.’ But there was some motor within me that kept saying ‘Go forward, go forward.’ So I kept going.”

Her small clinic gradually attracted the attention of philanthropists and donors, including the German foundation, Christoffel-Blindenmission (the Christian Blind Mission International), which played a pivotal role in the early years by paying doctors’ salaries and providing medical equipment.

Representatives from the foundation encouraged Villalobos to wean her organization off outside support and become self-sustaining, which she said was achieved within three years. The clinic later expanded services to include general medical consultations, dentistry, cardiology, gynecology and x-rays.

The ASEMBIS doctors have performed more than 27,000 cataract surgeries to date and have treated more than 3 million people, or around 360,000 a year.

In just the last five years, ASEMBIS has provided nearly $450,000 in free medical care for those who cannot afford to pay and kept costs low for those who could. Nearby private clinics often charge up to 20 times more and the public health system has a multi-year wait for much of the same care ASEMBIS offers on a walk-in basis. Villalobos said “sheer volume” helps the clinics contain costs while fueling growth.

“It requires a lot of work, but the volume of patients helps us make surpluses, which we turn around to invest in new technology or buildings,” she said. “All the money we make is reinvested in ASEMBIS.”

In the next several years, Villalobos hopes to expand the model to Nicaragua and Mexico.

“This model for delivering healthcare can be replicated in any other country and can help many more people,” Villalobos said.

The sleepless nights spent worrying about balanced budgets and employee morale took their toll. Consumed in her work, Villalobos had no time for her hobbies such as gardening or cooking and lost out on the opportunity to have a family.
She said her faith has been the single most important motivating factor throughout the years. She has also kept going because she knows her clinics have changes lives and saved eyesight.

“The relief and gratitude we saw in people made it worth it,” she said and then joked that her dog, Princesa, is a good child substitute.

Asked whether she would do it again, Villalobos smiled and leaned forward to emphasize her point. “Absolutely,” she said.