Up early this morning after a long successful day yesterday. We headed to the local hospital in Tomohon called Bethesda and we were greeted by the Director of nursing. We were shown all around the hospital, and introduced to various staff. The hospital would be a great place to take my 'Learn to Live' team of doc's nurses and health care workers. I would love them to work along side the heath care team in Tomohon to experience the day to day at Bethseda. The hospital for being one of the better ones in the region, still lacked so much equipment as well as providing clean spaces for care. The ICU for example had four beds, with a renal patient, stroke, septic and gastroenteritis patient, all of the equipment was shared, the linen was not very clean, the monitoring machines were few, however the staff were great, and were working so well in the conditions they had.
This hospital uses a barcode system to check patients in. Patient records are kept for 5 years in the hospital, then 10 years in a locked facility. There is one ultrasound in the hospital. This hospital probably has a catchment area of 10,000. The main health problems seen here were, acute and chronic infection, TB, Malaria, Type 2 diabetes, HIV and Stroke in younger people. I had a great conversation with the lead OB/GYN doc about needing to change the way of thinking of the children to better there health. I explained that it was the same in the western world, but he said people are catching on later here.
Bethseda was happy for us to come with our team next year, which is great!
We then travelled to a town called Sonder, about 30mins from Tomohon in the mountains. This hospital is the oldest hospital is East Indonesia 'Siloam Sonder', it was built in 1905. There were two wards. The wards looked like the were from 1905, divided into male and female. There was one male patient with Tuberculosis, on fluids, so sick, no isolation, doors open. There was one woman, she had gastroenteritis. The facility's of this hospital were almost non existent. We went to the OB/GYN room, it had a broken bed with rusted apparatus, it hadn't been used in years. The other ward had recently had the roof cave in, and water had been flowing in when it rained. The doctor here was so happy to meet us, and was full of heart. He needs equipment, he needs support, however he has none. I plan to get him some equipment and support through 'Learn to Live', we have too.
We then took a 2 hour drive to Sapa Barat. This is the location of our second clinic location. This village has 900 people on the coast, no fresh running water, health care is 25km's away, the people can't afford $1 to get to it. We were greeted by the head of the town. Everyone we met here were so open and welcoming to us bringing a clinic here. The head of the village offered his office to us to have our clinic which is very central. We walked around the village for two hours speaking to the locals listening to there stories, it was awesome.
What a day. 2 locations found. Better go to sleep. Up at 6 tomorrow. Goodnight!
