Today was our last day of hospital visits! We started off our morning by revisiting University of Austral’s location in Buenos Aires, where we listened to a presentation by Dr. Josefina Medrano, the previous minister of health in the Argentine province of Salta. She was Salta’s first female minister of health, lead the province through the COVID-19 pandemic, and is currently a physician with Swiss Medical. Dr. Medrano explained to us the various actions she had to take during the pandemic, such as intersectoral coordination and suitable expenditure choice, and then dove into topics such as healthcare management companies, conflicts she had come across during her time as minister, and the decisions she had to make. Something that resonated with me was how she emephasized that realistically, you can’t make everyone happy with the choices you make as a leader. 

Following this lecture, we had the opportunity to visit two hospitals, one public and one private. The first hospital we visited was Fernandez Public Hospital, where we listened to a presentation by the previous director. We explored the difficulties of running and sustaining such a large public hospital, rooted with the fact that people visit the hospital from not just the province of Buenos Aires, also but many other places in order to obtain quality healthcare. This instills a high demand for the hospital to provide care for an excessive amount of patients, as well as priotritize spending their budget on human resources (hospital staff) in order to keep them working. After the lecture we went on a tour of the hospital, where we came across many similar components we’ve been seeing throughout the other hospitals we have visitied. Compared to the other pubic hospital we visited, Paroissien Hospital in La Matanza, this was by far much nicer, although still a drastic difference toward a private hospital such as ICBA. 

After a nice lunch in a Palermo shopping center, we saw our second and last hospital of the day, Swiss Medical. Unfortunately, the presentation we were supposed to attend at this hospital was canceled, so our visit was cut to just a tour. We visited a few floors throughout the hospital, and immediately noticed the many differences between what we were seeing and the public hospital we had seen only a few hours before. Swiss Medical had an updated infrastructure with advanced technology and equipment, and patient care rooms that honestly looked like nice hotel rooms. This hospital was extremely nice and advanced in a different way than ICBA, which was by far the nicest we’ve seen, although felt too empty.

The social gradient in health is the relationship between a person’s health and their social and economic status, basically meaning that the rich stay healthy while the poor are more prone to being sick. This can be seen in both the U.S. and Argentina, but it appears in different ways. In the U.S. access and quality to healthcare is directly linked to employment and insurance, making it difficult for low-income or uninsured individuals to receive consistent, quality care. In Argentina, care is considered a basic human right and is available and accessible to everyone through the public system, although quality of care can differ between public and private. In both countries, wealthier individuals have significantly better care and resources.