Our activity today was super early, and we were all ready to head out of the hostel at 7am (some of us do better with early hours than others). We wandered around a little bit looking for our bus stop, and once we finally found the correct one, headed out to Clinica del Puebla.
Clinica del Puebla is located on the outskirts of Oaxaca. It is a full service hospital that was started in November 2000 by Padre Scott Seethater. We had a presentation in a lecture hall looking room with a projector and all. Here is some of what we learned:
-Money does not mark a person at this hospital. Everyone gets the same services whether you are able to pay or not.
-Their ultimate goal is to become economically stable and be able to provide services for all surrounding communities.
-The hospital provides medical services and education for those who need it. They also work with alternative medicine and laboratory studies. They hold many programs that teach kids about basic nutrition and hygiene.
-In 2010, greater than 50% of visits were consults and around 45% of visits were for surgeries.
-In the beginning of the hospital, 90% of the visits were general and 10% were specialty visits. Now, it is the other way around. He didn’t really explain why, but my guess is that the general education programs are helping people prevent general maladies that would otherwise lead to hospitalization).
-Most patients are between 25-44 years of age.
-The hospital gets about 4$ for every consult. Most money comes from donations (they do not get any money from the government). Much of the money they receive is allocated to specific areas, such as laboratory research or emergency hospitalizations.
-Here are the major conditions they see: Oftalmologia (ophthalmology), Odontologia (odontology), Ginecologia (gynecology), Otorrinolaringologi (otorhinolaryngology), Medicina Interna (internal medicine).
-80% of people who come to the hospital have to wait less than 30 minutes to receive services. At the most, people will wait 2 hours.
-Many of the programs at the hospital include traveling to communities to bring healthcare services. Many problems that are simple turn into delicate situations because care is unavailable at the beginning of the illness. Their goal is to reduce these circumstances.
-Most doctors who work at the hospital are volunteers and also work in other locations. There are a total of 70 doctors “on call.”
-The hospital only has 6 private beds, but there are many rooms for other services.
We had a chance to walk around the hospital once our lecture was finished. Although small, the equipment and patient rooms we small were very clean and up-to-date.After, we headed back to CASA to have a “closing.” We talked about everything we saw during the week and how it all related. Then, we were asked to give suggestions. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and my only suggestion was that I wished we had the chance to do more volunteer work.
The rest of our afternoon was free, and we all spent time spending our last pesos, buying gifts for friends/family and rummaging through our room trying to find all of the stuff we came with.
At 6pm we met at a restaurant to have a quick dinner before heading to the bus station and beginning our trip back to Guatemala. I decided to have a last Tlayuda, which tasted pretty delicious.
Getting everyone to the bus station on time was a little stressful. We needed to take taxis in order to get there, but they were all backed up because it was pouring down rain (surprise, surprise!). There happened to be a person at the hostel (a friend of the owners) who happened to be there with a van. So, we all piled in Guatemalan style. It still took us two trips, but eventually everyone got to the station and we got on the bus with 5 minutes to spare.
This overnight bus was even nicer! We were given complimentary headphones and beverages, and there was a coffee bar at the back of the bus (next to the bathroom, which was a little weird).
This overnight trip was a little longer. I got pretty nauseous and started to taste the Tlayuda a second time… but Dramamine saved my and helped me sleep a bit. We arrived into Tapachula around 9am. We had a quick breakfast at the same “Disfrutar” restaurant and then headed to the border.
Crossing the border was pretty simple and painless, and pretty soon we were back on Guatemalan soil.
As we were driving, we got stopped by a police car. Apparently, the Guatemalan police system has this “complimentary service” for buses/cars full of gringos. Basically, they escort you back to wherever you are going. It is pretty much a waste of resources because we clearly don’t need the protection… we have driven all over Guatemala without any problems. Its also ironic because if you find a dead person or are actually in critical danger, you pretty much cannot rely on the police to do anything.
So, for a while we had a police escort. They drove behind us with their siren lights on. Each police has a certain zone they have to cover, so when we reached a zone, a new police car would take over. This happened for about half the trip. Then they must have gotten bored because suddenly it stopped and we heard nothing else about it.
We got back to Xela early afternoon and headed to Artesano bakery to have pizza and hang out.
And that completes my version of Oaxaca!
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