An Assistance in Lima

(20.05.2011)

In our study of medicine we need to do a practical training after our medical preliminary examination. Fortunately we have the possibility to make this experience in a foreign country. Therefore we were happy that with the support of the Peru-Aid we had the chance to go to a foreign country to get to know people and medicine.
In August 2002 we arrived in the foggy capital Lima and were welcomed heartily by Melva Delgado. At the next day our assistence in the Hospital del Nino began. It is a public hospital in a part of the city called Brena. Right from the beginning we were astonished by the great number of mothers with their children who pushed into the hospital.
Altogether the beginning of our visit was coined by the cultural differences between Peru and our home country Germany. We saw little differences in the hospital's everyday life, which later ought to develop into positive alternatives for the us known medicine. The really motivated doctors were forced to fall back on their medical experience and their wealth of ideas, because of a lack of possibilities. It was a part of the hospital's everyday life that gloves, normally used one time, and bandages had to be washed and that modern techniques of diagnosis like ultrasound, MRT and computer tomography had to be compensated by the clinical experience of the very good doctors.
By means of the good guidance of Dr. Ramirez we were able to have a look at different fields of medicine science. We saw diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and affections by parasites which we had only seen in our teaching books. Most of the time we spent in the ward for burned children. Here children were treated which were strongly burned in the shanty towns of Lima or in one of the mountain villages. Again the treatment of the patients was good and they had great success in transplanting skin.
In the ward for burned children we met an unnecessary and shocking circumstance. The burned children were insufficiently treated with painkillers. Never before have we seen such needless pain. Children with their bodies burned up to 40 per cent were treated with weak painkillers although a therapy with opiates like morphine was absolutely needed.
This problem is caused by the lack of possibilities to prescribe important medicine. It is not a financial problem, but a problem caused by a strict legislation in the prescription of painkillers and by the lack of information over the little danger of addiction in modern therapies. The children suffer needless. Furthermore the chief physician told us that he thinks the cause of burning accidents is the wrong handling of candles. Information of the parents would reduce such accidents. Already by using a chandelier most of the accidents could have been prevented.
We got to know not only very friendly people and a beautiful country, but also their problems on the medical field which can be improved by support and information.

Gudrun and Wolfgang Schäfer