Out of Necessity

As we've traveled around to these hospitals in the Typhoon- affected areas, there's a few things that keep coming up and they are striking. And give a good illustration of the medical situation in some of these places.

First, so many of the doctors here are actually surgeons (takes only one extra year in med school) but so many of these facilities aren't set up for surgical procedures and don't have the equipment they need to perform surgeries. So far, none of the rural hospitals have had a ventilator. Seems quite a shame.

It's also become clear that many of these same doctors, also get their nursing license and eventually move to the Unites States and become nurses. Licensed surgeons moving to become nurses is not how you'd expect it to happen.

Photo: Jodie Willard

Supplies in these hospitals are seriously lacking. In three different hospitals, they've said their primary need is for cotton balls. And since they cannot get them, they have nurses tear off sheets or pieces of gauze and roll them into cotton balls and then sterilize them for sterile cotton/gauze.

And lots of babies. All the time. 5-10 per day in some places where they only have one "delivery table" and two or three post-delivery beds for the moms and new babies. We've seen three moms and three babies (that's 6 people) sharing the same bed--all sleeping perpendicular on the bed.