Day 6 - 37 Hospital

Thursday, March 17 – Day 6

I am in the hospital.

Don’t worry, I don’t have malaria or typhoid or any other ailment of which I’m aware. Emily, Tamar, and I are here at Accra hospital with Bismark and Joshua because Joshua broke [Note from the future: badly sprained] his wrist last night playing football (soccer). The older boys play football on the field every day after school. It is their sport and their passion.

Joshua broke the same wrist he had broken back when he was eight years old and somebody hit him or pushed him down. (Physical violence is common here to teach respect and many of the WORCSA children have difficult pasts, some including abuse.) Sara, Niki, and I met him last night en route from the house to the orphanage. We had been headed up to tutor but Niki and I offered to walk Joshua’s health insurance card back to the volunteer house. Two of the older boys escorted us.

Joshua getting his wrist checked by Michelle.

Volunteers handle all the kids' medical matters, including dispensing medicines for a fever or even malaria, deciding when hospital trips are warranted, and trying to figure out when the kids just want attention or the candy-sweet medicines.

Health insurance, unsurprisingly, is different here. Take Joshua, for example. Joshua, like all the kids at WORCSA, gets insurance for 4 cedis per year (paid by volunteers). His most recent health insurance card for his annual renewal has yet to be delivered from Accra by the health insurance man who comes once every three or so months. The temporary card he has expired yesterday. Even with the health insurance card, which has 15-year-old Joshua’s birth year as 1996 but his age listed as only 11, we paid an 8-cedi registration fee when we checked in at the hospital. Before the insurance man delivers the good-for-one-year card, the insurance place in Accra takes four months (of that one year) to process it. It’s a long, drawn-out affair.

This is a country of hospitals and clinics rather than primary care physicians so Accra’s 37 Hospital is full of people. X-ray sent us to the full-to-the-brim clinic waiting room to get a referral. The clinic shifted us (before we waited in any line, fortunately) to registration, where we got Joshua a patient card and paid the 8-cedi fee. After registration, Tamar and Bismark asked around for where we should head next. Someone at the clinic said we should go to the trauma & surgical ER and someone else said we should go to the clinic; we headed to the ER to avoid the long clinic line. There, we met the super-helpful older entry nurse who green-lighted us through the consultation and referral process after having a younger nurse do a basic blood pressure / pulse check right there at the wooden entry table. All the nurses wear blue-and-white or green-and-white versions of the stereotypical World War II nurses’ uniform, complete with pinned-on apron and stiffly folded three-sided white cap.