Hospital Day 1

After all the shennigans in getting here, it was time to start at the hospital. My interpreter, Iyon and I met the Director of the Hospital and were lead to the grand tour. Upon entering the hospital, two things became clear. Firstly, the supply and demand relationship was out of whack. Thick queues of people lined corridors waiting to be seen, streaming out onto the street. Each person carefully clutching a small, pale blue book that was their personal health record. The hospital services a region of about 100,000 (about the size of Darwin) and the hospital is about the size of Alice Springs Hospital (services a lot less than 100,000) Secondly, this was not like any hospital I had encountered before. There appeared to a doozy in the time-space continuum and I had somehow landed back in the fifties. Limited running water, no elevator between the 4 floors, minimal pathology testing, medical equipment I had no idea how to use. Amongst the midst of this, I somehow ended up in maternity and spent the rest of the day there. 

Women arrived by themselves with their own food and blankets. When it was deemed necessary they were moved into a 2 bed waiting room from the ward. If there are more than two, they all sort of share the space. Eventually when the moment gets closer, the women are then shuffled into a birthing room- think stainless steel chair and stirrups, and procede to give birth as doctors and midwives bark at them. So far I haven't seen any pain medication used. After giving birth if there are concerns about bleeding, a large piece of cloth is tied around her stomach and wrenched tight, well beyond a girdle. It is left there for two hours with further pressure occasionally added. Women are then put back in the waiting room and eventually transferred to the ward (think a room with four beds, nothing else). 

So Day 1 was spent here, adjusting to a very different type of medicine. I delivered my first Mongolian baby, my name was even misspelt in the official record to validate this. To be fair, Mongolian women so far have made birthing look ridiculously easy. Delivering a baby really just involves putting your hand out and giving a bit of a tug. In the midst of these challenges, doctors and midwives worked together well and the Maternity Department had a much friendlier feel than any I have previously encountered in Australia.