It’s the weekend. I slept in until 8am which was refreshing (but yet not refreshing enough). I didn’t do anything but work at the hospital and go to the market with the Cubans. It was market day and very busy. I bought enough brown rice to last the next 6 months. I didn’t realize I had asked for so much!
I’ve been preparing the milk and checking on the kids on week nights and the weekends. The women who normally run the program aren’t here at these times and I’m just beginning to really realize how big a problem this is. I think it will be great when I can finally set up a schedule with the nursing students to help out. The other thing though is that the CNP covers all hospital costs for the children in the nutrition program. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as just paying the bill at the end of the patient’s hospital stay. There is definitely a bill at the end, but there are also many little expenses on a day to day basis because families have to purchase all medicines, IVs, etc. themselves.
I ran into a problem with this today. One of the mother’s of a little boy who was admitted on Thursday has absolutely no money. (We actually met them at the Ti Foye visit in the mountains that we did on the 23rd and told them they needed to come to the hospital.) When I went to go see how they were today, the baby’s IV had run out and he had a prescription for an antibiotic and a thermometer (patients even need to buy their own thermometers!) that needed to be filled. The mom hadn’t gone to the pharmacie to buy more saline soln or get the meds because she couldn’t afford it. She was also supposed to be taking antibiotics herself (which I know she had because I gave them to her), but hadn’t taken them because she didn’t have any clean water or food to take it with. I was able to get everything for the baby because I have access to the CNP pharmacy and I have a stash of money to buy what we don’t have from the hospital pharmacy. Otherwise she would have had to wait until Monday! I guess I’m just going to have to ask the pediatrician on try to predict what the children may need over the weekend and get it for them on Friday because I won’t be here every weekend (and it’ll be nice not to have to work everyday).
