Roosevelt Hospital

Guatemala is a country that provides Universal Healthcare to all of its citizens
through a model called the “Modelo Incluyente en Salud” (MIS – Inclusive Healthcare Model). Their inclusive model seeks to guarantee universal coverage to populations usually without access to these services due to linguistic, economic, cultural or gender barriers.

For me, this simply means that a lot of underprivileged and impoverished Guatemalans technically have access to services they would not be able to afford by themselves. However, only a minority of the lower class really receive the medical attention they need.

There are public and private hospitals in Guatemala. Roosevelt Hospital is the largest public hospital in the country.

Roosevelt Hospital
Roosevelt Hospital is located in the heart of Guatemala City. There are 152 general medicine beds and a 12-bed intensive care unit. It has departments of Medicine, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Pediatrics, and Surgery with corresponding subspecialties including: gastroenterology, infectious diseases, neurology, rheumatology, cardiology, pulmonary, endocrinology, and dermatology.  

Outside the main entrance of Roosevelt Hospital

The hospital offers 24/7 care; however, it lacks an emergency room and is without ambulances. WashU donated an ambulance a few years ago which is currently being used to transport patients in critical care and hospice home from the hospital and is not even stocked.

The ICU...has 12 beds and at any given time may be filled with around 5 to 6 surgical patients (often recovering from gunshot wounds). The rest are medicine patients with interesting infectious diseases, cance, liver disease, or other general illnesses.
Many doctors at Roosevelt Hospital also work at a private practice. Unlike in the US, doctors and nurses working at public hospitals are not paid particularly well. On the other hand, doctors working at a private hospital are able to charge a lot for their services and serve the upper class. Doctors at public hospitals are not less qualified or skilled. In fact, they have more patient, do more procedures, are faced with a larger variety of problems varying in complexities and learn how to problem-solve and work hard early on.

To learn more about how you can help, e-mail them at:
comunicacionsocial@hospitalroosevelt.gob.gt
and visit the websites listed below:
http://www.hospitalroosevelt.com/ 
http://www.hospitalroosevelt.gob.gt/HR2