The past few weeks in San José and
Las Cruces Research Station have been quite enlightening. I thoroughly enjoyed living with host
families and taking Spanish at the Costa Rican Language Academy (CRLA) in San
José, and Las Cruces is a beautiful field station that I can’t wait to return
to at the end of the semester. During
the past few weeks, we have been on several field trips to various hospitals
and indigenous areas. However, what
struck me the most during this time was the stark contrast in healthcare in
different areas of Costa Rica.
It is easy to compare the Costa
Rican healthcare system with that of the United States, since both are very
obviously different – Costa Rica has universal healthcare and all the pros (and
cons) that come along with that, while the United States does not. It was not until we visited several health
institutions, though, that I realized how different various levels and types of
hospitals in Costa Rica were. While we
were in San José, we visited a private hospital called Clínica Bíblica. It was a beautiful hospital, similar to the
hospitals I have been to in the United States.
Patients seemed very well cared for, and there were cafes and brightly
colored stained glass windows, as well as a piano in the dining area. However, I did not realize how truly
impressive it was until we visited the next hospital immediately after – a
public hospital called Hospital San Juan de Dios. Perhaps it was the rain that coincidentally
started falling that afternoon, but the hospital gave me a strange feeling of
melancholy. It seemed overcrowded, and
doctors and nurses seemed stretched thin with the sheer number of patients they
had to care for. It was by no means a
bad hospital, but the juxtaposition of these two hospital visits struck me with
surprise.
Later on the way to Las Cruces, we
stopped by an EBAIS in La Casona, an indigenous area. An EBAIS is focused on more personalized and
community-catered healthcare, so it was no surprise it was small. The two photos I have attached show the goals
of Clínica Bíblica and the EBAIS. With
the private hospital’s fancy billboard with broad goals such as service,
integrity, and cooperation compared to the EBAIS’s goals of prevention and
promotion scribbled on a whiteboard, it was obvious these two healthcare
facilities were on different levels. But
after visiting the EBAIS, I left with a comforted feeling. The doctor who talked with us was
enthusiastic about helping the community, focusing on problems specific to the
indigenous people in the area. It was
clear that even though there are such different levels of healthcare in Costa
Rica, they all play their part in helping the community, whether on a broader
scale or a smaller, community-catered level. 
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