Yin to her Yang

Debbie's post on the well-baby clinic was sweet, but we have also seen a different side to the Mozambican hospitals in the last couple of days. No pictures for this post--trust me that you do not want to see them.
We went to the hospital, accompanying our young HIV infected friend for her first appointment--providing just a bit of moral support in a challenging time. The crushing press of the amassed humanity there was something to behold. People arrive at 5 in the morning in hopes of seeing a health care worker that day. Our friend arrived at 5 a.m. And we joined her in line at about 10:00 and got into the doctor about 11. The HIV wing of the hospital was a little less upbeat than the new baby section. Our friend was sent off for a blood analysis which consumed the entire next day (not the testing but the waiting to do so) and she will do another 6 hour stint at the hospital tomorrow to bring the test results back to the original doctor.
There is a supply and demand curve at work here. Health care is essentially free (except for the non-financial costs of the endless waiting). As a result, people go to the hospital for every ache and pain, every cold and flu symptom. There is no vehicle for people to obtain over the counter medicines for common ailments. One must go to the hospital for evaluation and medication. It is crazy (in my peculiar way of thinking). When the most constrained or precious resource is medical personnel, it is a literal killer for them to be used inefficiently.
Yesterday afternoon we spent a bit of time in another hospital. The pediatric wing of the central provincial hospital here. Such a tragic place. We visited our tiny friend Santinho who you may have seen on our Christmas card. He was not recognizable, having wasted to just skin over the tiniest of bones. His mother has been there for days with him, but there doesn't appear to be real treatment. Mother and son share an adult bed and family brings food to supplement hospital fare. We brought him more formula as there is no food for him at the hospital. Debbie and I wept to see the sight of the room that he shared with several other mothers and sick children. It is my hope that he died in the night and is free from his suffering.