Managua Girls: Coming at you from a local hospital

On our third day in Managua, we took a trip to a local public hospital called Lenin Fonseca Hospital. As we drove up to the gate of the hospital, there was a sign that said that all care and service offered at the hospital was free, and if someone is charged they should let them know. At first glance, this seemed like it had great potential, because free health care is far from the norm at home in the U.S. When we got out of the car, we could all see that this was a very different hospital than the ones we are used to at home. The building was all one story and simple. We entered a small classroom and the head nurse and teacher, Flor, welcomed us to the hospital. She explained that she has been at the hospital for many years, and this hospital mainly deals with trauma. It is funded by the government, but does not receive enough funding, so they cannot afford air conditioning for the whole hospital, and they struggle to offer drugs like pain killers and antibiotics. There are not many doctors at the hospital, mostly nurses, and Flor teaches nursing classes for them. The classroom we were in was very plain without science equipment or computers, so we were interested in what those classes would be like. We then took a tour of the hospital, and that was a very eye-opening experience for all of us. First of all, I think we were all taken aback that a big group of American strangers was allowed to wander the halls of a hospital. As soon as we walked in the building, we started sweating from the heat. As we walked through the different sections of the hospital, we passed rooms, each with a big window we could see into. Each room was a standard hospital room size in the U.S. that would normally have one or two beds, but here the room was filled with six or eight. Each bed held a patient, wearing as little clothing as possible to stay cool, and typically surrounded by loved ones. This made the rooms very crowded and most likely not very sanitary. We also went into the surgical hallway and the dialysis hallway, which were luckily both air conditioned. In the dialysis section, we could see the patients through the window, and they looked very sad and fragile. They come in two times a week for treatments, but also are responsible for daily care and a strict dietary regimen. We are talked already about how alcoholism is a problem for a lot of Nicaraguan people, and it made the statistics more real to see the effects right in front of us. Our entire trip to the hospital was very important to all of us. Our tour was almost somber, as we walked the halls silently looking on at the patients that we knew weren’t getting the care we knew they needed. If nothing else, the trip humbled all of us and definitely made as grateful that we have advanced health care accessible to us at home, and that we can afford it. We hope in the future the government And other organizations will step in to help local hospitals provide the level of care that nurses like Flor wish they could.
Emily Bango & Hannah Guttman

 

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