Monday, February 28, 2011

Day 10, February 22 (Tuesday)

Today we had a meeting in a different health center called La Mantica. We took public transportation to get there. La Mantica is the health center that receives patients and monitors the clinic at El Tololar. In order for us to do rotations at El Tololar in the future, we need the approval of the leaders at La Mantica. That was the primary purpose of the meeting and they promptly approved our plan. The leaders then took the time to further educate us regarding the set up of the health care system in the Leon region.

After this meeting, we went on a tour of the hospital in Leon. This tour was shocking to all of us. The conditions of the hospital were extremely poor. (I could not post any pictures of the conditions as there are patients in all of the pictures, but will try to describe it.) The hospital rooms consisted of large rooms that held roughly 5-15 people at once. Obviously, there is no air conditioning nor television. When the hospital gets busy, patients often share beds. Patients are separated by specialty and further separated as either "infected" or "clean." This means that all patients with any type of infection (cellulitis, pneumonia, etc.) are all placed in one room while "clean" patients (surgical, trauma, etc.) are placed in another room. Imaging consists of only X-Ray and ultrasound.

After the hospital tour, we had lunch and had another meeting at the epidemiology center. We were given a lecture regarding a recent study on infant mortality. We also discussed the possibilities for our epidemiology project that will take place in our third year. After this meeting we returned to the hostel and spent the night finishing our teaching presentations.

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