Santana

Visit to Santana Hospital, Dominican Republic, 1996

Letter to Ralph (in South Carolina) from Barbara (in the Dominican Republic), Monday, August 5, 1996:

Janice Hunter gave us a tour of Santana hospital this morning, in full operation. People had filled up the waiting rooms by the time we had had our breakfast in the guest house. It's a busy place. Janice said people start arriving at five in the morning.

Janice told us that after Hurricane David destroyed La Posada, they received lots of donations to help rebuild it and the surrounding community that had been destroyed. There was close to $250,000 raised, half of which went to helping the people in Boca de Nigua rebuild their homes. They decided not to sink the remainder into the Posada, since it was only leased by the government, and the contract was close to expiration.

So they asked the donors if they could build a hospital with it, and received their approval. While that was in process, they used the Child Evangelism Fellowship Camp – the one the Racke's worked with when they were down here. It's referred to as the "Chicken Hilton," because there was a chicken farm across the street from it and they'd turn the lights on at 3:00 AM to get the hens to lay eggs. 10,000 hens would start clucking. Lots of earplugs for those poor folks trying to sleep at the Chicken Hilton!

Fonchi got permission from the government to use the land Santana Hospital is now built on, to which they eventually obtained title. It was a fairly isolated location – only about 60,000 inhabitants in this area when they started building the hospital, and that was mostly refugees who'd lost their homes to the hurricane. But by the time they had finished building the hospital, there were about 100,000 inhabitants and now it's up to about 300,000.

Janice said that the Ophthalmology Department in the hospital does about 20 surgeries a day. Remember crazy teen-aged Carlos Gomez? He's now Dr. Gomez – an Ophthalmologist! They have a whole school here for Ophthalmologists, and the students work with the Ophthalmologists. It takes them two years to complete their training. The school is right at Santana Hospital, but the eyeglasses are located downtown. This hospital is known as the place to go on the island if you need eye surgery.

The hospital is only an ambulatory care center, and caters to poor people – won't accept people with money. Janice said that if they did, they wouldn't have time to care for the poor. It's difficult, she said, because some of the wealthy people, who know the best eye care in the country is here – get demanding. But their commitment is to the poor.

In fact, Janice told us about a woman who had gone through their screening process and been qualified to have her surgery here. However, when she showed up for the surgery, she came with her son, who was chatting on his cell phone… They know some people sneak past them but they try to weed out the people who can afford to utilize the hospitals in Santo Domingo.

They have a whole education department that goes out to the community to teach about health issues (which they also do in the waiting rooms), and to lead Bible studies.

We saw a line of women holding infants – part of the "Leche" program. They come every day to get milk. Janice showed us 'before and after' pictures of some of the babies that had been in the program. They transform from skin-and-bones to healthy, fat babies. Reminded me of Isabel's baby. He weighed eight pounds when he was eighteen months old, but filled out when we took her that discount baby formula from Medical Assistance Programs (MAP).

Tuesday, August 6:

We met Dr. Batlle, who directs the ophthalmology residency program at Santana Hospital. He said that in 1985, he'd given a presentation at the International Eye Foundation. He'd told the participants that he'd been praying to find a way to go back to the DR to help poor people. After the meeting, Jim Gills asked him if he knew Willie Hunter. He hadn't heard of Willie, so Jim sent him a copy of Madonna Yates' book, Million Dollar Vacations.

Dr. Batlle lined up a meeting with John Shannon and Willie Hunter at the airport in Miami. They told him they were building Santana Hospital, and he said, "If you take care of my library, and the administration, I'll take care of the patients." So that was where the hospital all began.

Staying with us here at the guest house this week is a friend of Dr. Batlle, an ophthalmologist from Virginia, Dr. Bill MacIlwaine, with his teen-aged son, Andy. Dr. Bill was a resident at Duke University when Dr. Batlle was there for medical school, and is here sharing some of the latest technology with the local doctors and ophthalmology residents.

Last night, after Dr. Bill's first full day of surgery at Santana Hospital, someone asked him when he had decided to become a doctor. Dr. Bill said, "Today." He's been a doctor for over 20 years! But he said, "This is what medicine should be about. It's simply helping people without all the bureaucratic and administrative concerns we have to deal with at home. There are no worries here about malpractice, lawsuits, administration, red tape – this is pure medicine.

"Here we can just help people – people who need it desperately but can't afford it. It really takes me back to those idealistic days at the beginning, when the first goal was to serve humanity. It's so easy to get distracted by all the rest of it, and get numbed to the reality of taking care of people. Here, I can just give!"