Health

Yesterday when we went to the warehouse I met a man that works for an organization called Vine International, Dennis McCutcheon. Vine international is an organization that distributes medical equipment in several countries. They are currently trying to start a ministry that does medical equipment repairs. The idea is, Dennis states, is "Rather than shoving the broken machine in a closet and buying a brand new one we could potentially fix the machine for about 60 cents." It's really a great organization, but they can only do so much. 

Hospitals in Guatemala work in a three tiered kind of system. 

At the top you have the best equipment and doctors and facilities for the very wealthy. 

In the middle you have government run hospitals where the quality of treatment depends on the conscience of the doctor. 

At the bottom you have church run hospitals that do as much as they can but have their limitations when it comes to money. 

You would think that the bottom would be the worst right? Wrong. The middle tier is the hospitals that wreak of death. When you can walk out the main door of the hospital and see five funeral homes it should be obvious that there is a problem. It's interesting though that that is the culture here; people don't go to the hospital until they are ready to die. 

Very soon I will meet an eleven year old girl named Perla. Her family is very poor and she has had severe tonsillitis for the past four years. It has gotten so bad that her tonsils stay inflamed and swollen and never go down. Her family lives in a tin shack and can barely afford her schooling much less a surgery. My host family has been trying for two years now to get Perla this surgery and finally she should be getting it on Monday morning. I will let everyone know the details very soon, but first I want to give a glimpse into Perla's life:

When she was nine she still didn't know how to read or write. Her teacher called her stupid and ugly, and told all of her classmates to call her stupid and ugly. She does have some very unfortunate teeth and actually needs surgery for that as well. Anyways, her teacher and classmates would pinch her arms and call her names and she would go home covered in bruises. That same teacher told her parents to teach her how to clean or sew because that's all she would ever be good for. Thankfully they managed to move her to a different school where she has started to learn but still gets picked on. 

This breaks my heart.