It is Hospital Joaquin Albarran’s Turn

It is Hospital Joaquin Albarran’s Turn / Rebeca Monzo
Posted on March 4, 2016

Rebeca Monzo, 4 March 2016 — About a month ago, in order to change the
direction of the Joaquin Albarran Clinical Surgical Hospital, located on
26th Avenue at Avenue of Independence (Boyeros), a Commission of the
Ministry of Public Health, composed of 35 specialists in different areas
of public health, undertook a thorough inspection of this institution.

The results, of course, were as expected, for years, by the patients
coming to this hospital: rooms with ceilings and woodwork in a total
state of disrepair, filthy floors, walls and toilets, leaks in the
bathrooms and an absence of hardware, buckets and containers with stored
water and other disgraces.

Of the six elevators in the hospital, usually only one is working, and
it takes the sick and surgical patients up and the dead and garbage
down, carrying food, patients and visitors.

The balustrades and handrails on the stairs can be scraped with a knife
and a centimeter of grime can be dug out, incrusted by time and lack of
hygiene. One more piece of evidence that doctors and staff called
attention to was, on asking them to wash their hands as was common, they
then applied a spray that was found to be full of bacteria.

I was told all this by a surgeon who worked for years in this
institution, whose name I withhold so as not to cause him problems. He
also told me that the hospital lacks pulmonologists and has barely
enough anesthesiologists.

As a result of this exhaustive inspection, the departments of nephrology
and psychiatry were closed due to their great state of unhealthiness and
deterioration.

A friend, who recently had to use this hospital for emergency surgery,
told me she had to climb the stairs, with great effort given her severe
pain, because the only elevator usually working was broken that day. She
added that, when she came out of surgery a doctor seeing her exclaimed,
“Wow! The patients are now using the stairs!”

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