What Makes a Hospital?
Just how basic are the basic health care needs of men, women and children in the poorest parts of the world? It's not enough simply to have access to medicine. You have to have the doctors and nurses who can administer drugs correctly and treat patients appropriately. You have to have the fuel to run the motorcycles and trucks that serve as ambulances and mobile clinics.
And you may even need a washing machine, as I learned from this recent e-mail from Dr. Sue Makin, a Presbyterian mission worker in Malawi:
[Dr. Makin writes:] "I used to give a talk called "Hospital 101 " and told people that an autoclave makes a hospital. What is an autoclave? This is a machine that sterilizes medical instruments and linen that can be used to perform operations and clean deliveries. Every hospital needs a working autoclave, and two working ones would be preferable, in case one breaks down.
Imagine a hospital where employees washed all the dirty sheets, linen, towels, and gowns by hand and hung the wet items out to dry, when it wasn't raining. Would this really be a hospital?
Yes, up until now Mulanje Mission Hospital, where I have worked for the past eight years, has been doing just that.
Now, a new era is dawning with the construction of a new laundry building and the purchase of an industrial washer and dryer. Believe me, some of us are really excited about this development, including the women who used to wash everything by hand."
Makin's e-mail gives a whole new meaning to the word "basic."
--Christine Gorman/New York
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Reader's Comments
What I really hate in hospitals is the environment - from the lobby to the rooms - that is totally 'messy', just like what our province has back home. It's a public hospital where some patients lay in beds placed along the corridors and in the hallway. Even some of the rooms are not that tidy, especially the wards.
With this scenario, I think the patients don't get the 'proper' treatment they should get. The place where they are kept for recovering from certain illnesses must abide with what really a hospital should be. I mean, these hospitals must have the cleanest facilities which will provide fast recovery on the patients. I think that 'autoclave' is quite an interesting and a very useful gadget in keeping the tools and materials used in operations germ-free. Well, in this case, the materials should not be the only equipment to be treated this way, but also and most importantly all parts of the hospital.
I think that 'autoclave' must be 'spread' all throughout the globe, especially to nations which we consider as Third World. Let's not just limit new pieces of technology to be saturated in places that already have it all. Nations in the Third World need equipment such as this because its use is between life and death.
posted by: Kimberly A. Amor | February 17, 2007
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