Visit to the National Hospital

Today we visited one of the National Hospitals in Chimaltenango. This is the hospital that people go to that cannot afford the other hospital in Antigua. This hospital has areas for intensive care, surgery, emergency, maternity, peds and some others as well. In each section there are anywhere from 6-20 beds. The first section we walked through was just a womens section in general. They were all there for different reasons and only had one nurse taking care of over 15 patients. I cant imagine one nurse having to be responsible for 15 patients with no help. I think its unsafe for some of our nurses in the states to have 6 ER patients at one time. There is no such thing here for a nurse to have only 6 patients at a time. Even the peds room we visited with all different cases of illnesses had 15 babies being treated by one nurse.
We did go by the newborn room, but we couldn't go in and see the babies :(. However, they opened one of the curtains so we could see inside. The babies born here are so small! We we were told that having a baby over 7 lbs is considered huge! All I could think about was that Jordan weighed 10 lbs when he was born!! haha...
We also got to visit the hospitals ER. There was one ER doctor (Looked like Matos, Mom) and he only had about 4 patients, but they had room for 10 or so. Their ER was the size of Memorial's ED2 I would guess. The room was split into 3 parts and the beds were sectioned off by sheets tied up by wires across the room.
The new maternity building was my favorite part of the tour. Their new buildint is beautiful and will be really nice once it is finished. We went and visited areas where the baby is with the mother 24/7, C-section area and also the natural birth wing. Angie and I got to see a baby that was just a few hours old!! They all look so tiny! What surprises me the most is the age of these ladies having babies. One of them looked like she was 12 years old. It's heartbreaking to see.
At the end of the tour we helped unload two truck loads of hospital equipment to be donated. It was amazing how excited these CNA's, nurses and doctors were about the equipment. The equipment that just a day before we were sweeping off rat poop and dust off of them. It felt good to help deliver this equipment to the people who work there. They seem to be doing their best with what they have.
After seeing the hospital all I could think of was how I DO NOT want to get sick or hurt while I am here. We all agreed that if anything happened to any of us we would trust the people we are with to take care of us rather than the hospital. We are so fortunate back home for what we have. It is incredible to think of the things we complain about back in the states.
This was a very eye opening experience for me and I feel that I will better appreciate what I have in life and not dwell on the objects that I do not posess.