Thursday 28th July

Yaay my letter is finally ready! Well not yet, but I'm getting close every day.

This hospital isn't as bad as I had expected. They have quite a lot of equipment. I'm not sure who pays for all this though, the government perhaps? I was told that everyone is obliged to have the national health insurance here but sometimes patients need to pay for extra costs, such as HIV meds for example.
There are so many nurses around the hospital and they are all very fakey friendly to each other. There is no staff problem here it seems.

Sarah at the modern building A&E department

Of course the conditions are a bit poor such as the decor and perhaps the hygiene for the patients (eg.toilet and showers).
There are quite a lot of people in one ward, about 36 people in the big wards.
Everything seems to be quite slack, such as the nurses just carrying around their handbags and playing with their phones in the ward while doing other things. Also the wards are just accessible for anyone to walk through, once you've passed the one security guard downstairs that is. Usually the wards are female and male separated but some wards are mixed.

So after waiting another 3-4 hours I got my letter. But then the head of the Medicine department wasn't in so have to meet him tomorrow morning to get the letter signed so that I can be assigned to a team.

Faustina took Sarah and me around to looks at some surgery wards. We went to the Burns unit where we had to wear a gown and shoe and head covers which was fun, then to the "special ward" which is like the private back home. 100 cedis per night for a bed in the 4 bed ward and 150 cedis per night to have a private bedroom. This looked so much more like hospitals back home. Very clean, nicely decorated and generally more fresh atmosphere. Also the rooms have their own bathrooms which are so much better than the ones in the normal wards. And then we went to Radiology as well.

Clexane is free on health insurance but heparin is not. That is 22 cedis per vial. Heparin is more saturated than Clexane. Heparin can be used to treat skin burns on the face so that the pale whiteness disappears and helps the face to return back to normal. But the boy we saw who fell into a pan with hot oil could not afford this (100 cedis per day for 7 days) so he would only the basic treatments.