Hospital

Current Clinic
New Hospital
Doctor

I've been asked to upload some pictures of the hospital, clinic, and doctor.  The doctor is about done with his year of practice (kind of like a residency) and then will probably leave the area.  We are looking for a doctor that is used to the rural area and would want to live here, but that's hard to find.  We had a woman doctor for about two weeks and she didn't like it.  The government can't find doctors for here, so they send people here for their one year residency.  As a result, we get inexperienced doctors that have no committment to the area and will leave in a year.  This will be hard to break, but we at least need to get more than one of these residents for the time being.  The other thing is nurses.  We have a couple trained nurses in the town, but the government hasn't ordered them to work in Los Cacaos, they travel to Cambita or San Cristobal to work, even though there is a need for them to work here.

The hospital is what I am trying to equip.  The clinic is what they use now.  It's run down and not adequate.  The municipal police will take over this building shortly as they tore down the old building to build the new high school.  The hospital building was built by a foreign NGO about 7 years ago and has yet to be used.  With this equipment we can get into the hospital and better serve our people.  The last piece of the equipment puzzle is an inversor, so hopefully I can meet with the public health people next week.

I spoke to the new group of trainees yesterday, it's good not to be the "newbies" anymore.  On Thursday-Sunday my neighbor, Claire, will have one of these volunteers staying with her to see how she lives, so that will be fun as well.