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Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-in-latin-america/
"Disease of the rich, killer of the poor’
How Covid-19 brought Latin America to its knees
The coronavirus pandemic exposes deep inequalities as it courses through the region. Mathew Charles reports from Bogot?, Colombia.
This article has an estimated read time of 11 minutes
Hospitals usually smell of bleach, but not this one. Instead there is a stale stench of stagnant water.
The cream walls carry deep scars, inflicted by years of passing trolleys. Flakes of paint decorate the floor, uneven from so much traffic of feet and wheels. But the obvious years of chronic underfunding do not reflect the care and compassion of the doctors, nurses and technicians, who control these corridors.
El Tunal hospital is in Bogot?’s sprawling southern suburbs, and it is filling up. At the start of the pandemic in Colombia, it had just 15 beds in the intensive care unit (ICU), but by the end of this week that will have increased to a maximum capacity of 104, as each of the hospital wards is converted into a high dependency unit.
“For every patient that leaves ICU, a new one arrives. It’s a conveyor belt,” says Dr Jhon Edinson Parra Mancipe, the head of intensive care. “If a 105th patient is wheeled through those doors, that’s when we need to worry.”...
"Disease of the rich, killer of the poor’
How Covid-19 brought Latin America to its knees
The coronavirus pandemic exposes deep inequalities as it courses through the region. Mathew Charles reports from Bogot?, Colombia.
This article has an estimated read time of 11 minutes
Hospitals usually smell of bleach, but not this one. Instead there is a stale stench of stagnant water.
The cream walls carry deep scars, inflicted by years of passing trolleys. Flakes of paint decorate the floor, uneven from so much traffic of feet and wheels. But the obvious years of chronic underfunding do not reflect the care and compassion of the doctors, nurses and technicians, who control these corridors.
El Tunal hospital is in Bogot?’s sprawling southern suburbs, and it is filling up. At the start of the pandemic in Colombia, it had just 15 beds in the intensive care unit (ICU), but by the end of this week that will have increased to a maximum capacity of 104, as each of the hospital wards is converted into a high dependency unit.
“For every patient that leaves ICU, a new one arrives. It’s a conveyor belt,” says Dr Jhon Edinson Parra Mancipe, the head of intensive care. “If a 105th patient is wheeled through those doors, that’s when we need to worry.”...