In the midst of this journalistic work, I decided to visit one of the best private clinics in this country: the famous Santa Fe Clinic. I swear to God I had never been inside. Frankly, I was overwhelmed with the first impression. From the concierge to the large and modern spaces of the waiting rooms, they are ‘outstanding’. The infrastructure and attention that all Colombians deserve, I think.
Could it be that only patients with money can enter here? With prepaid medicine? What I actually found, dear reader, will surprise you. I mightn’t believe when the director of the clinic, doctor Henry Gallardo, told me this: “between 20 and 25% normally come from social security, and that is like a permanent standard. Sometimes it reaches 40%. (…) Here everyone receives the same level of care”.
I wanted to check it. I walked into the nursery and was met with this electrifying story. This is Jenny Marcela Díaz Duarte, a 23-year-old mother from Mosquera, Cundinamarca, unemployed and abandoned by her husband for a cruel reason.: the malformation of your baby in the tiny abdomen.
“Since he found out that she had been with it for regarding 5 months, he left. I don’t know if she felt sorry for what her daughter was coming with”. Although they initially tried to treat her at the hospital in her town, she had to receive more specialized care. “There were no machines or specialists for everything she needed and they sent her here, thank God, they gave me the opportunity”, she tells me as she draws a powerful gesture of hope and joy on her face.
It does not matter if they are from a cradle of gold or straw. There are nine premature babies who receive the best of all attention. Naturally, I do not want to say that the same does not happen in a public hospital. But to be honest, here everyone, absolutely every detail is designed and thought out to the millimeter.
There is a burn room where I met a mother from Villavicencio, from the subsidized regime, and she said that following she was referred to Bogotá she was “happy and content with the clinic’s service.” Regarding the country’s health system, she considers that the service between rich and poor is the same, but the care is different depending on the clinic or hospital where it is received.
Pay attention to this fact: in this clinic, nine out of ten transplant recipients are from Sisbén or are affiliated with an EPS. I spoke with Osman Andrade, a patient who through his EPS received a liver transplant 11 months ago due to cirrhosis.
Deeply grateful for the care he has been receiving, he gave his opinion on the idea of changing the health system in our country. “We are used to disarming what has served due to personal or political grudges. The system, at least for me, has been vital”.
I wish the health service that Colombians receive was like that of this clinic. That regardless of whether the patient is rich or poor, whether he lives far or near, he can feel comfortable with the care he receives. For this, I am convinced that the healthiest thing is to improve what we have, without jumping into the void.
Visiting a public hospital
I arrived at a public hospital in Bogotá in the midst of the eternal debate between rich and poor, which today is more in turmoil than ever in the country’s streets. Under my arm I carry a copy of the tome of the controversial health reform that President Gustavo Petro has already delivered to Congress.
Before rushing through the door of the emergency room, a lady turns around and fires point-blank criticism at the service: “Look, I’m here for the emergency room. If they want they attend me and if they want they don’t attend me. It is happening in Ibagué, everywhere. The situation is difficult for the Colombian right now, ”she says energetically.
Immediately he releases a somewhat disconcerting phrase: “Now, that they are going to take away the EPS, imagine. I am from Capital Health”. How has your EPS gone? I ask him: “Well, I hardly use it and when I come, I come to the emergency room.”
Upon entering the medium-complexity hospital, located in the north of the city, I find a large room where several women are sitting, waiting for their turn to be treated. I sit there, I sense the answers, but I put this concern in the middle: Do you think that our health system is the same for rich and poor?
The tongue of a woman sitting there turns into a submachine gun: “Of course not. The rich have their medicine prepaid and can pay for the best specialists, the best care. The poor have to submit to the ranks, to see if they assign us a spot for a medical appointment. I’ve been trying to get a dental appointment for three months.” Another lady standing nearby adds: “If you don’t have money, you’re screwed, brother. If you don’t have money, screw yourself”.
They are mostly women who are in the subsidized health system. They have come there in search of a cure for different ills. Some more serious than others. ‘María’ lost her vision, she rolled down some stairs and is on crutches, desperate due to knee pain, but nothing that she manages to be seen by an orthopedist. “The pandemic just started I rolled down some stairs and this is the time that I might not get the appointment and it’s not fair that we have to wait in line too long to get any appointment,” she says with anguish.
Another woman that I meet later walking down a corridor approaches me to say: “You are a journalist, right? Look, I really like this hospital. I was sick with a respiratory condition and here they healed me. But now I have another problem. I have made an appointment, and appointment, and appointment, and that there is not, there is not, there is not, for the eyes. I’m already going blind, because I have glaucoma, and for regarding a year I’ve been asking for that and no, there isn’t “. Could it be that someone here has read something regarding the blessed reform? I wonder. “I haven’t read anything”, a lady who comes out of the X-ray room answers me.
Is the health system in Colombia equal to that of Cuba?
This week’s marches in the streets, both by government and opposition members, did not escape the relentless bombardment on social media. In that avalanche of messages, some true, others not, Petro’s bill was compared to Cuba’s health system. A trill with photographs of patients piled up and in precarious conditions in a supposed medical center on the Caribbean island went viral.
How good is the health in Cuba?
I contacted a doctor from a Havana polyclinic via WhatsApp and his answers left me with more doubts than certainties. Is Cuba a world power in medicine?
“As a way to care for the patient, to be responsible in terms of their health, to give them better medical care, to be prepared as a doctor, with knowledge, I believe that we are indeed a medical power. Now, at the level of resources, we are not very well prepared when it comes to providing good health. We don’t have a CT available, or we don’t have better quality ultrasound equipment, or we don’t have any resources”, he affirms.
It is not a secret that education is free on the island. But it is also extremely sad that a doctor on that island does not want to work as a doctor. Not because he doesn’t like or love his profession, but because medicine doesn’t provide enough money to survive there. It is pure love for the vocation to serve and for art.
“A doctor in Cuba currently earns, on average, between 5,000 and 7,000 pesos.” How much is that in dollars? I asked him. “That for the black market, approximately 30 or 32 dollars a month.” That in exchange for our Colombian currency does not exceed 140 thousand pesos. “The salary is very unfair. That is why the doctors ask for sick leave and start working in a cafeteria or a bar, or even leave the country, ”he added.