The pavilion, when it was inaugurated, ten years ago / the day
A decade ago, the National University of La Plata (UNLP) fulfilled a dream: to inaugurate the first university hospital so that advanced students from the Faculty of Medical Sciences could carry out clinical cycle practices there. And so it was that, at the request of the then dean, Dr. Jorge Martínez, a unique pavilion of its kind was set up at the General San Martín Polyclinic, with classrooms and academic tools suitable for training students in Surgery, Medical Clinic, Urology and Gynecology, some of the 16 chairs that still function in 71, between 1 and 115. For this reason, the alarm went off when photos began to circulate this week (such as the one seen in this article) that show the building deterioration of the Pavilion, with spaces in which classes were previously taught and that now look disabled, with holes in the ceiling, peeling walls and bags of waste accumulated inside.
Even more so, because those who promoted this key work for Medicine remember its double merit: the teaching of classes without altering the tranquility of doctors and patients of San Martín and the need to add spaces for a faculty that had not yet witnessed the exponential growth of the enrollment that, as a result of the unrestricted income, it experienced in recent years: from the 3,400 students it had in 2015 it went to more than 33,000 today, almost 900% more without the teaching staff or the infrastructure having increased to the same extent .
“On the contrary,” laments a professor of Medicine who teaches at 71 and 115 and prefers to keep his name confidential. “The lack of maintenance in the University Pavilion is notorious”, adds another and lists: “There are ceilings with huge holes; in some sectors there is a lack of running water; the vast majority of air conditioners and heating do not work and we are freezing to death, since due to Covid-19 we have to keep the windows open for air to circulate.”
The degradation, teachers agree, worsened during the pandemic when, classes were suspended, the Ministry of Health chose to set up one of the vaccinations against the coronavirus in the Pavilion. Around the end of 2021, he was “returned” to Medicine and only in April of this year, when he returned to face-to-face attendance, was it that many teachers and students noticed the damage.
The sector functioned as a vaccination against Covid-19 and the lack of maintenance worsened
“It deteriorated during the pandemic, we have already asked the authorities to fix it and they said they are going to fix it,” Blanca Campostrini, head of Gynecology A and who teaches at the Polyclinic, tells EL DIA. She adds that these are “sectorized” problems and that, in her case, the classroom she occupies “is acceptable.”
“I know there were problems with the roofs,” acknowledges another professor who daily fatigues the University Pavilion, but prefers not to go into too much detail and asks to direct the query to the dean’s office, where they avoided responding.
In the most populous faculty of the UNLP, the building problems threaten the need for classroom spaces and attendance. So much so that, according to students, the course of Internal Medicine A is one of the few that are studied at San Martín entirely in person. “The rest, in general, do it remotely,” they say, while noting the lack of technological tools so that, at the same time, teachers can develop face-to-face and virtual courses “synchronously, for those who do not fit in the classroom”.
The shortage of personnel is another point that worries the teachers consulted. They point out, for example, the (paradoxical) lack of employees in the maintenance area and of teachers: “We are practically the same, while the number of students multiplied by 5,” warns a teacher who teaches at the San Martín. “That’s why most classes are virtual. This is felt in the first years, but especially in the last ones, when the time comes to do internships in hospitals and there are no quotas for such large commissions. The consequence is that future doctors, instead of having two practices per week, have one every 15 days. It is very serious”.