I hate to complain, but in the short time that we have been here, we have seen some pretty significant errors committed by the staff of the government hospitals in Guatemala. I am sure that there are some fine doctors and nurses who work there, but what we see at our clinic for the folks at the Guatemala City garbage dump is the handiwork of those who are less capable.
Today, we saw a woman who had her ankle crushed last fall. In October, she had surgery to reconstruct the bone, including those nasty stabilizing rods that stick all the way into the leg. She had an x-ray from the time of the surgery and an x-ray from last week. The surgery was not done correctly, and there is absolutely no evidence of bone growth. Oh, and some doctor has kept her on antibiotics for 5 months.
As part of our work here, our team has started to commit to pay for some much needed surgeries of people coming into the clinic...but at private clinics with competent doctors. In cases like this poor woman, it sure would have been nice to have it done right the first time.
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