A first hand experience with healthcare in Ecuador

So I have been battling a sore throat for a couple days and had diagnosed myself with a strep infection. I needed penicillin so I went into a pharmacy and asked if I needed a prescription. I did, so I figured I would just wait to see if it would resolve itself without intervention. Then this morning when we were working at the hospital, I met an intern that wanted to go into otolaryngology, so I had her take a look. Diagnosis: strep throat, Treatment: a penicillin injection in my butt. Oye ve! So they took a history, asked about allergies, I dropped trou and got a shot. Cost: $0. JACKPOT! Other than that our first day was pretty uneventful. Due to the bad weather, there were very few patients. All we saw was a man with a dislocated toe, that needed to be put back in place, a child with a sore throat and fever, a woman with gallstones and a woman needed a refill on her high blood pressure medication. Tomorrow I get to travel into the mountains with a mobile clinic that provides care to people who can't make it to Banos to see a physician. I am pretty excited! That's about it here on this end. More to come later this week. We leave for our beach trip Thursday night. We can't wait!