July 30, 2013: Tropical Disease Hospital of Goiania

Sister Joana and I were able to do a little shopping this morning as we both needed to buy some gifts, though mine will be traveling much farther! We went to Setor Central and walked around part of “downtown” Goiania to find what we needed.

Dr. Bonaventura Braz de Queiroz

My afternoon consisted of a visit to the Tropical Disease Hospital of Goiania, my last hospital visit of time here, and a social service meeting at CRESS with Sister Joana and Professora Vera. The Tropical Disease Hospital, though it was a little sad, was very interesting and I had a really great tour guide. He was a security technician, who is in charge of reporting all accidents in the hospital and orienting all visitors, staff, and service personnel about proper sanitation/personal protection and prevention of the spread of diseases there. He was really knowledgeable about the ways of the hospital and it made me feel a little safer from germs as we marched up and down the halls in our white lab coats. I visited the adult and pediatric Intensive Care Units, which have nine and four beds respectively for the whole city of Goiania, state of Goias, and all those who come from out of state (as a reminder, this hospital is the only hospital for tropical diseases in Goias and is a reference hospital for other states). We passed through the halls of the inpatient section of the hospital as well as the emergency section and the urgent care section. I was able to meet and talk with a top-notch infectologist, named Dr. Bonaventura Braz de Queiroz, who now works in the urgent care but who previously worked as the director of the hospital for twelve years. To be attended at the hospital in the emergency room, you must either be taken there from a Cais, the type of emergency center I visited on Friday, or you must have HIV. To be attended at the hospital in the urgent care, you must be referred by a family health center such as a Cais or a PSF, you may not directly seek treatment at the urgent care without a referral. 

At the Tropical Disease Hospital, I finally, after three full months of working with countless doctors and nurses and social service assistants, learned that SUS, Brazil’s public health care system, is part of Brazil’s constitution that was written in 1988 when the country returned to having a president after a time of military rule. It is a right, something that if the United States’ founding fathers included in the United States’ constitution would have been dubbed “inalienable,” and is guaranteed to be free for all citizens of Brazil. When I commented that health care in the United States is not a part of the constitution, I was met with puzzled stares and one person even said, “Well then you need a new constitution!” The question of responsibility for one’s health care yet again arose.

Once we left the Tropical Disease Hospital and after attending a long social services meeting at CRESS, Sister Joana dropped me off at the Bueno’s house for a final party with the family. Thaynara and Karen’s mother Tiana made lasagna and my favorite saffron chicken for dinner and almost the whole family came over! I will miss them dearly and cannot thank them enough for welcoming me and helping me on this journey. I am so glad, I learned Portuguese, if for no other reason than because I am able now to talk to Tiana and Carlos Roberto. It was so difficult to communicate with them when I first arrived in their house and at times I felt so rude to not be able to talk with them. Now though, everything is almost normal and hopefully I was able to fill them in a little bit last night with all the things I was unable to say previously.