Luanda Pediatric Hospital

By William J. Cummings

"Women and children start to line up in the early hours of each day, held back from entering the Luanda Pediatric Hospital by metal barriers and humorless guards, both of which will heat up as temperatures increase during the day in Angola's capital city. They are there to seek medical treatment or return to the bedsides of their sick loved ones for a few hours of comfort to both visited and visitor.

In a city with so much need, Luanda Pediatric Hospital, the lone such state facility in a country of 13 million people, stands out as a sanctuary from the hopelessness and despair of a chronically poor people. The Luanda Pediatric Hospital is a sprawling complex of mostly older buildings, connected by worn steps and dim, unlit passageways. The staff expends every effort to make visits and stays tolerable for their patients and anxious, attending family members.

Seemingly immune to their grim surroundings, the hospital staff goes about their business with the professional bustle of a competent medical staff anywhere in the world, treating as many people as possible, up to 500 patients a day, every day. They use old and often broken equipment and dispense as much care and comfort and medicine as possible to relieve the pain coming from all around them".

This scenario is repeated in hundreds of hospitals in developing countries worldwide... physicians and health care practitioners struggling to save lives with limited supplies and outdated equipment.