Foya-Borma Hospital

I went on another hospital visit yesterday and I spent the afternoon training the Hospital Administrator on logistics and warehouse topics. It was very interesting. This hospital serves more than 70,000 people in the Foya District as well as people from nearby Guinea and Sierra Leone who come for the free medical care. It has about 103 staff including 1 full time doctor, 10 nurses and 6 midwives. It has 120 beds and an ambulance. In my last post I said a couple of times that anything was better than nothing. But it turns out that is not a universal sentiment. Even though the services are free, there are a complexity of issues that result in many Liberians not taking advantage of them. There is a general distrust and misunderstanding of "Western" medicine and a cultural dismissal of going to the hospital. My mother and grandmother never went to a hospital, why should I go? Organizations like mine do community outreach to try and educate the public on the services that are available and the need to seek treatment, but many people only come to the hospital when their condition is unbearable and they are often past the point of being treatable...or they never come at all and needlessly die. Sad.

Foya-Borma Hospital grounds

View over Foya town from the nurses' living quarters

Here they give children their vaccinations

Patients have their vital signs taken as they get in the queue to be screened

The "waiting room" for outpatient care

A woman in an exam room being screened by a nurse

The Records Room

The Laboratory

The Pharmacy

This is where the doctor and nurses scrub in for the Operating Room

This is the OR. Maybe this is all you need to conduct a surgery...but this room makes me shudder

One of the inpatient rooms in the Women's Ward

The Pre-Natal Ward

One of the rooms in the Pediatrics Ward

The ER

This is an example of a good intention gone bad. This ambulance was donated by the Liberian Vice President who received it from some European donors. But it is a Mercedes and can't really run over the rough terrain here. Plus, they can't easily get spare parts and mechanics don't really know how to work on them. So apparently this was only used a couple times and has now just been sitting there for like 3 years.

This is the kind of vehicle that can actually work as an ambulance. I'm telling you, Toyota Landcruisers are awesome.