I just wrote an incredibly boring update on my situation which included some obligatory statistics regarding the country, the people, and the hospital. The only thing worth noting, I think, is the crazy amount of good the people at Kudjip Nazarene Hospital do with what American hospitals would consider chump change. You can check out all the statistics here at their website of how many people they see, babies they deliver, and surgeries they do. Suffice it to say that it is pretty freaking amazing, especially considering they do it all on $750,000 a year.
Coincidentally, that is just under twice the amount it cost for Stephanie and Caleb's stay at the hospital when he was born. Stephanie had preeclampsia, which basically means her blood pressure (as a result of the pregnancy) was so high it was trying to kill her. As a result, Caleb was born at 30 weeks, and spent a month and a half in the NICU.
I'm definitely not going to go all utilitarian and say that we shouldn't use expensive treatments/resources to save lives. Far from it! The money spent on both of them was more than worth it, and I don't like to think about what life would be like for me now if we had been in some third world country when it all went down. Selfish... maybe. It is just crazy to think that our one hospital bill could fund an operation that serves a province of half a million people for the better part of a year. I think that speaks to the differences in both the capacity for complex care and the level of resourcefulness in our respective systems. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up on some of that resourcefulness while I'm there.
1 comment:
Dude, glad to see ya enter the world of blogging. Also, I hope you have a lot of fun over there and you guys learn a lot. Good luck!
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