Medical Spanish

At Hospital Lorena with the SALUD Program – By Tina Lin, Guesst blogger traveling to Cusco, Peru.
This morning we went to Hospital Lorena to shadow doctors. I attended the Paediatrics' grand round with 3 other students. A little bit about hospital Lorena: it is a hospital that admits mostly patients from rural areas. These patients receive aid from the government if they can prove their economic status. Most of these patients are not well educated and they often speak limited Spanish. The most spoken language in rural areas (el campo) is Quechua. I will explain more about Quechua later.
The lack of knowledge about health and hygiene causes many problems we usually would not see in the US. For example, many kids presented with severe case of parasitic infection that are complicated by malnutrition. We saw a kid with tapeworm infection where the egg of the worm got lodged in the brain and caused several convulsions.
Another case was infection with amoeba that manifested in stool with blood and phlegm. This kid was having diarrhoea almost every 20 minutes. Her father looked very tired but patiently waiting by her side and cleaning her. He told the doctors that the medications are not working and the medical team considered stronger antibiotic/anti-parasitic. Aside from parasitic infections, we also saw a girl with severe ascites. The doctors suspected that on top of being malnourished, the little girl may also be infected with tuberculosis. This is because out in the farms, most children are not vaccinated against TB and they live in over-crowded quarters that are poorly ventilated. She may be mal-nourished because most people in “el campo” have a lot of children. The mentality is that they want to have more hands to work in the farm. Another reason why they have so many children is that women are not well informed about birth control. The husbands believe that if women have access to birth control; they might run away with another man.
The treatments for most of these children are usually antibiotic or anti-protozoic drugs. Most of the drugs purchased by Hospital Lorena are generic because the government funding is often inadequate for brand-name drugs. The doctors also prescribe conservatively. They will try to prescribe the first-line antibiotics like ampicillin before they try stronger antibiotics. I was told that the most common causes of parasitic infections are from unclean water or undercooked meat like pork, beef, or fish.
After the visit to the wards, we asked the doctor about the living condition of the children (in terms of the rate of abuse). He told us that most cases of abuse are not resolved even if it was brought to the attention of government officials. The child protection officials are poorly paid and most of them will do what is minimally required. Sexual abuse is not uncommon in rural areas. Due to Machismo, it is often a taboo topic for girls or women to report cases of rape. Women will most likely just live with the abuse and keep the emotional distress to themselves.
I learned a lot in the hospital today. In the afternoon, we had Spanish classes as usual. My classmates went out to a movie at night, but I went home to rest. I feel like the program really kept us very busy. I need my free time at the end of the day.