When you have been in this country for a while you are starting to see below the surface. Below the backpacker “luxury”. Because lets be honest, a backpacker life in Laos is something many locals here will never have such as having just four walls and a door with a fan. For us, it is going back to the basics. Essentials. But they will never know this. Sometimes I wonder how they see us. White people being able to eat, drink, travel. Not working. This must be alienating for them.
Especially with going back and forward between Thailand and here, the difference is immense. Thailand is a mixture of extreme luxury and poor villages but overall the health care they have is pretty good. They have all the technology you need in the big city hospitals. And if you have ever been to the Bangkok super malls you know what I am talking about. The Bijenkorf is nothing compared to that. They have an Ikea just as part of a mall. That is how big they are. I could not believe my eyes the first time Jack took me there. Everything is so extremely pretty and grand. In Laos there are no shopping malls. We have one small Chinese supermarket in town and we are very thankful for that. But here, that is extreme luxury if you compare it to the villages.
Last night I was talking to the manager of a non-profit organization here and she told me about the conditions in the hospital here. She was recently admitted because of Dengue fever. There are no blankets, no food, not even water. In the ICU there are no monitors and all the family of the patients are sleeping on the floor and bringing in food and leaving it there. Hygiene is really bad. They don't wash their hands, that is just not part of the culture here. No hand alcohol. No sterilizing of instruments. They diagnosed her not by blood test but by putting a rubber band on her arm and seeing if spots would appear.
I can't imagine being able to do something for these people or help them as a doctor. When the basic things are just not there. In the Netherlands if a patient comes in the first heart help (EHH) before even seeing them they get an extensive lab test, ECG and thorax x-ray. Teaching the nurses in the villages CPR is even not helpful because there are no AED’s available, no medication, no help. The only AED in the region is in the children's hospital in the city. But for most people this is more then four hours away and they don’t have a car, besides they will not be able to pay for it anyway.
Talking to this manager it is starting to hit me how far behind the people are here. Their doctor is a shaman and white people only bring the bad spirits to the village. I think the biggest benefit for the people in the villages right know is learning about hygiene. People are dying every day now from a simple cut that has become infected. A simple thing as washing hands could change a lot here.
