The Cayapa pi chulla Kumani Association – Friends of Cayapas, is a non-profit medical association whose headquarters are in Spain. It is composed of a team of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals who have been working for several years with the indigenous Chachi community of the Esmeralda province, Ecuador. Through the Ministry of Health program of Onchocerciasis Control in Ecuador in 2006, we were able to implement our professional work in the 7^th health district of Borbón, but at the same time the complexity of access of all of the communities.

Always maintaining a two-way dialogue with the Chachi ethnic group, their leaders and health promoters, the indigenous communities showed us their need for access to healthcare in the communities of the upper Cayapas River. There are big geographical challenges (turbulent rivers and several days in canoe to the reference hospital in Borbón) as well as the absence of resources to mobilize themselves through river transport.

The Association of Friends of Cayapas – Cayapa pi chulla kumani, was born in 2012 with the intention of minimising such needs in collaboration with the governmental institutions of the region, without whom we could not achieve our work.