Day 6 in Argentina! The group had an early breakfast again to meet in the hotel lobby at 8:10am. We took the bus outside of the city to a place called Tigre. We did a boat tour on rio Captain Tigre to go to a small public health clinic on an island about 20 minutes off of this town. On our way we saw lots of boats carrying food, water, and school children! Since this island is so isolated off of the main land, many of the residents’ resources are right on the island. We saw tons of little kids waiting on their docks for the “school boat” to come pick them up to go to school. Everyone waved at us and it was so interesting to see this way of life. After we got to the clinic we met with Nurse Emilse and Nurse Eugenia to talk about the care they provide at this clinic and some of the struggles they face. The clinic is very small with only about 3 rooms and a few cabinets worth of medicine. There was an ambulance boat tied up out front that we got to tour as well. They have the basic life saving supplies like emergency oxygen, a BVM mask, and gauze. After a little tour by the amazing medical team there we took the boat back to the main land. After some debrief with the group we went to lunch and got a very nice (and free) steak lunch thanks to IES Abroad. We then did some shopping in the surrounding area and I got a few gifts for my family. That marked the end of our day and we bused back to Buenos Aires for the rest of the night. I did a little wandering on my own and actually got my nails done at a very nice salon in the city. It took some english and spanish collaboration but we got the job done with some phenomenal translation and lots of pictures. Very excited for a fun day tomorrow!
One thing we learned from our tour of the clinic today is how important primary care is for the proper functioning of a health system. When there is only one clinic for miles and miles it is crucial that it has proper supplies, medical professionals, and communication with the community. Unfortunately this clinic was lacking and it severely affects the members of the surrounding communities.
One challenge in this situation is obviously geographical. If you are on an island with limited supplies, monetary support, electricity, gas, and man power, then your clinic will suffer. For example, if there are floods than the ambulance boat may not be able to dock at the patients house and it will take much longer to get into the house and get the person out using a smaller inflatable boat. Also, the interior of the island if where most people in extreme poverty settle since the island dips in the middle and floods more prominently in the center. This makes it harder to reach these people who are so remote if there is a healthcare emergency. Another challenge with Tigre is the actual infrastructure that they have. There is no hospital and no pharmacy which creates a mentality of prevention, prevention, prevention. They promote prevention of disease, illness, and accidents so that medical visits are limited. One last challenge is the lack of integration of systems. Many of the public hospitals we have visited, including the clinic today, have no medical electronic records. This limits the sharing of patient information between hospitals, checking past visits, and ordering medications. This just seems to be an overarching theme with the public hospitals that will hopefully improve with more development of the country.
Argentina clearly has many barriers in the way of delivering high quality and accessible primary care to its citizens. In order to break down some of these barriers more primary care would be extremely beneficial. However, for the area of el Tigre they seem to be working with what they have as best as they can. And as sad as it sounds, their system works very well for the most part as long as they continue to promote prevention of medical emergencies.
