I visited a 200 bed hospital in the city of Santarem in the north of Brazil as part of a project evaluation mission for the Rotary International Foundation. A donation of about $400,000 was used to buy important X-ray machines and ultra-sound equipment in this under-serviced city and region. On the right of the photo is the General Manager of the hospital, a native from Santarem who had just returned to his home town in early 2014 after medical specialization and work in Sao Paulo. This hospital is the referral hospital of a region with about 1.2 million people. You can imagine how busy their emergency room is all the time 24/7. During our tour of the hospital I witnessed many motor accident patients; motor cycles are in these parts of the world more common than cars. If I already disliked motor cycles, I now even dislike them more....
While the first photo showed a mobile X-ray machine, here is one of the donated fixed station machines in a recently renovated room. You can see that our GD of the hospital is happy....
After the visit to this city hospital we drove an hour to a regional smaller hospital where Rotary also donated X-ray and ultra-sound equipment. During the drive we enjoyed some tropical rain....
In the back of the car my "three musketeers" of the day. On the left Getulio, the long-time Treasurer of the local Santarem Rotary Club who had overseen the good and transparent use of the funds from the Rotary Foundation (Getulio is a very fit 76 year old commercial shop owner and operator) and on the right Steven who had organized my visit and who had assisted in the final reporting of the use of the funds to the Rotary Foundation (Steven is an energetic 75 year old health care administrator who just like Getulio still works every day). Squeezed in the middle of these two "veterans" is Thiago who is the current Rotary of Santarem Club President with his 26 years of life experience....
We visited this smaller hospital during the afternoon when it is very quiet. The out-patient services are only offered (other than emergencies) during the morning because this hospital does not yet have enough budget to operate full days. They have a few patients staying overnight but longer term care would be transferred to the city of Santarem. While we were in the hospital the TV was on in the waiting room and we watched for a bit a friendly soccer ("futebol") game of the Brazilian team being hosted in Switzerland....
Also here the X-ray machines were in good shape after four years of use. Above the "fixed" machine and below the mobile unit. This hospital has only two trained X-ray technicians who each rotate between the morning services and the afternoon/evening/night stand-by for emergencies (compared to 12 technicians in the Santarem hospital who work between them a 24/7 service).
The technician showed me the daily activity book (not automated yet) which shows an average of about 10 patients per morning/day. Modest but essential services in a regional health center.
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