The doctors at Western Regional Hospital, located in Belmopan, the capital of Belize, have been on strike for the past 2 weeks. The reason is that they are frustrated with their lack of functioning equipment, which the government of Belize refuses to replace. At Southern Regional Hospital, where I am, the same equipment problems exist. For example, the one and only x-ray machine here has been broken for the past 6 weeks. A hospital with no x-ray machine hardly seems like a hospital. Not infrequently, an anesthesia machine will suddenly stop working in the middle of a surgery at which point the anesthesiologist will fiddle with it and with some luck, will get it working again. The equipment is so old and obsolete, that when parts break, replacement parts are no longer available because they simply are not being manufactured anymore. For instance, a while back, the tubing on the anesthesia machines cracked, and new tubing was not available. Somebody creatively replaced the broken tube with a nasogastric tube (a tube used to pass through a patient’s nose into his/her stomach for feeding or suction), and this has kept the anesthesia machines functioning for the time being.

One of the projects we (InterVol) are doing here is to assist in repairing broken equipment. Yesterday we had a teleconference meeting with Doran Mix, the technologically-gifted medical student I have referred to in past posts, and Ream Kidane, a biomedical engineer at RGH who has generously offered to come to Belize in March to help fix equipment. Our efforts will likely help, but ideally what needs to happen is that the Belizean government needs to step up and provide medical necessities for its people.

Photo: Ctenosaur (Ctenosaura similis), commonly known as a “Wish Willy”, living near my house, about 2 feet in length.