Thought Provoking Day

Oct. 20

Hey guys, I know its been a lot time, but just had some things I wanted to just write down. I spent all of today working at the clinic Pequeno Pasitos (run by the Mother's Wish Organization-http://www.amotherswish.org/index.htm) and just had a lot of thoughts today about health care here in DR. I worked with the nurse all day and observed what she does in the clinic. Very general things as in the US, and that made me think wouldn't her talents be put to better use in other situations? Anyway, afterwords we talked with the founders of the Mother's Wish Foundation and found out they just had a received a donation of $100,000 dollars to keep running their clinic, which just made me feel so relieved. Just knowing that people in this world are capable of such generosity keeps me motivated to want to work in the Public Health sector in Latin America. But we also discussed with Diego and Rita (the founders) how they were planning on allocating the funds to keep the place in business; because right now they want to open a pre-school as well as keep the clinic running, however the clinic itself is losing money with adult patients. See, at the clinic, children and pregnant women are seen first then at the end adults are seen last. This makes them mad, but the point of the clinic was to help the children and pregnancies. It costs a lot of money to pay for medicine for adults as well as the children especially the people with chronic diseases. So Diego and Rita asked Mollie and I what we thought would be the best method to revise the health care system here there at the clinic to save money and the doctors and nurses could work most efficiently and stop from just seeing people who have a cold and just come for the free medicine, and kinda waste the doctors and nurses times. Mollie had a good suggestion, of a Colmado (store on basically every corner of every street) motoconcho message system. People all congregate at Colmados to buy food, supplies, or socialize, and from there if someone in their family is sick and needs a consult, the doctor or nurse can come out there and provide a service, or prescribe medicine rather then just waste the doctors time at the clinic when the doctor needs to face the more important cases. This does however leave people out. This could and in all likelihood will cause problems, because people don't have much education about health, and how to really take care of themselves. People just self-medicate a lot and sometimes only go to the doctor if their condition is truly severe, yet at the same time how will these people be able to stay healthy? The education there is barely more than middle school for all of us back home. How can people educated at a middle school level take care of themselves, let alone their children!??! I go to this clinic and visit the cities and the people are happy; they don't have much money, education, or hope to leave but at the same time they're happy. It makes me just feel so lucky, in all reality I could have been more to a family like that, yet I was born into a such a better off family, and completely different society and culture. Why? Some of these people have never been to the beach, seen the ocean! They live on an island, and some of them have never seen the ocean because they don't have enough money! I remember in Santo Domingo we were at one of the museums and a family couldn't get in because they didn't know it cost money to get in, so my program director Lilly (being the most incredible person I know here in DR) paid for them to get in. There's so much inequality here its just something I can't really describe, you just need to see it for yourself down here. Anyways, I got sidetracked, being in I really would appreciate it if somebody would give me some suggestions or ideas of how to reform the health care system here, I'm coming up with some ideas too, but I'd like to hear from you, my educated readers. A lot of you I look up too, and I would love to hear from you. I hope all is well back home with you guys!

PS Its reallyyyyyy hott down here! :-D Hehehe, sorry guys, I'll be back in Dec, and just as upset as you guys! Boooooooo