Thursday, July 03, 2008

Adventures of the Medical System

Today was a calm day -- waiting for the operation tomorrow morning. Filipe, Ersilia and Daimer slept at the hospital last night. They joined all the other families sleeping on the floor in the hallway.

Bolivia does have a type of social assistance for the poor. DAVASON provides medicine in exchange for a donation. That was the way we purchased the medications today. It turns out that we paid more for them through the donation that had I purchased them at the pharmacy. Because you do not know the value of the product the donation may be too much or too little. However, this program subsidizes the beds so we will be paying 25 bolivianos per night instead of 50.

Today I calculated all the expenses I have incurred so far. It comes to 4251 bolivianos or just under $600. Imagine that the average wage in the campo is 35 bolivianos a day. Already we have spent 121.5 days of wages! Compare that to earnings of $100 a day and we have spent the equivilant of $12,150 dollars.

1 comment:

Irene Prins said...

My thoughts and prayers are with all of you, that all will turn out well, and that the tumor is benign.
Take care of your self too.