Social Justice in Healthcare

First things first: I finished my antibiotics on Thursday morning. I feel right as rain. I'm doing what I can to maintain my good health and care for myself. Now I can reflect a bit on the care I received at Clínica San José and what I saw there.

Overall my care was good. The objective of healthcare is to return a person's body to homeostasis. Objective accomplished. My one complaint about the attention I got was that they forgot to give me dinner. It wasn't until I asked multiple people about food that they finally bought me some soup from a take-out two hours after dinner had been served.

The big problem I saw at Clínica San José was racism. The sixth floor, where I waited for my test results and ended up staying the night, was the tourist floor. It was exceedingly nice. You saw the pics, it was so nice that all it lacked was a kitchen and it would have been a comfortable apartment for 2-3 people. The other floors (not for tourists) were not as nice, at least not the bits that I saw as I passed through them on my way up.

But worse than the extra cushy accommodations available only to foreigners was the lines. There were lines for everything; there's generally lines for things at the hospital. I was rushed past all the lines of waiting Peruvians because of white skin, status as a foreigner, and how much my insurance was willing to pay. The manager told the woman in the lab to prioritize my blood and poop tests over those of other patients because I was foreign. He said this in Spanish, perhaps hoping I wouldn't understand.

The shameful thing about this is that I did nothing to protest. Everything happened so fast that I didn't react well. I didn't react at all. I'm ashamed of that. I'm ashamed because my local friends from Andahuaylillas would not have been cared for as well as I was, and I didn't try to speak on their behalf. I'm ashamed because I should be better.

I certainly hope that I won't get sick enough to go back to Clínica San José again. But the odds are not in my favor considering how regular it is for someone in Mountain House to be sick. I pray that next time I go to Clínica San José, I act with more integrity and courage. I don't expect to change the culture there with one doctor's visit, but I can say that something is wrong. Next time maybe I'll leave with a clean bill of health and a clean conscience.