Today I had my heart broken by an 8 month old baby named
Victor. Last Thursday my team was in town and we met a family that was literally
rebuilding their home that was probably about 75 percent demolished by the
earthquake on August 15th of last year. When we were talking to
them, the father was in the process of building the house with adobe and
bricks. The mother was doing laundry and there were some children playing.
After talking to them we found out that their eight month
old baby had been sick for about a month. When we were there he was sleeping so
we couldn’t see much. It just broke my heart because when we asked how much it
was to see a doctor, she said that it was $4 Soles which is about US $1.40. The
father was an electrician, but he wasn’t working because he had to rebuild the
home.
Matt Peters my teammate offered to pay for an exam for the
Victor and I chipped in with him on this. We arranged with them yesterday to
take the mother and baby to the hospital this morning. Unknown to us at the
time was that the doctors here in Chincha (Perhaps all of Peru)
were on strike. When we got to the hospital they told us we could not schedule
an appointment because of this so we didn’t know what to do because the baby
really wasn’t doing well. He had a bad cough and had trouble breathing because
he had a lot of mucous in his throat. The mother also told us that he had
vomited the night before. He was such a cute looking baby that this just broke
my heart.
There were medical people walking around the hospital so I
had our translator who was with us ask them what we could do to get help
because Victor really needed it. They told us to go to the emergency room
because that was still open. We were able to get in right away, but the service
was terrible. They took the baby’s temperature and weight and then had us wait
for a doctor.
The doctor was able to see the baby right away, but she only
talked to the mom and checked the baby in about two minutes. The mother came
out of the exam room with a prescription, but when I asked what the diagnosis
was she did not know. I guess the doctor just wrote the prescription, which I
was appalled at. I am used to our top-notch medical care in the United
States, so I was pretty mad when I found out
that the prescription was only electrolyte solution that cost about US $2.50.
The whole emergency room appointment and prescription was less than US $10! If anyone knows some good medicines for infant bronchitis please e-mail and I
will look into going to a pharmacy on my own and getting it. Everything down
here is a lot cheaper so I could probably get it.
This whole trip is really showing me another world outside
of the one we live in the United States.
We do not have running water and we have to flush the toilets manually with a
bucket of water. There are a lot of things we lack, but God is definitely
making up for all of that. There is a lot that we have been getting
accomplished like fumigation for the refuge camp of about 300 families, 45 new
bushes donated by the government for a park, and we are in the process of
looking into building some much needed outhouses.
