Whas up Plaia!?

Bom Dia! from Salvador. We left our home stays inside of Santo Antonio de Jesus yesterday afternoon, which was definitely sad. It was an afternoon wrought with tears (Allisson and I didn~t of course, we talked about hearing rumors about that thing when you perspire from your eyes). It has truly been an amazing experience, getting to know another culture and experiencing how people in different a completely different society live their daily lives. We had our presentations on friday, all twenty of us gringos and our project partners got to prent the different anthropological project we had conducted over our time in SAJ. Allisson and I did really well, it was a lot of fun. Our project basically consisted of research I conducted in Amargosa which was to learn about the public health system with in the state of Bahia. I spoke with some really high up people which was a pleasure. Than made an interview with individuals accessing the regional public hospital with in SAJ, which was a lot of fun. I will try to post my findings so for all you interested out there in how a free public health system work inside of a middle developed country like brazil, you can read about my research. I miss my family already though. I woke up saturday morning, (the day we left for Salvador) and went into my mothers room where she and my sister were chatting. We all just lounged and talked for hours and it is such an amazing feeling to have a family open their home and their family to you, especially this weird light skinned person who speaks less portuguese than a todler. I had to giggle and smile the day she said ´´bye son´´ to me haha. It is great to experience how deeply engrained soccer is into everyday life here in Brazil. While i have not been able to play yet (which I dont want to talk about), my brother bought me a jersey of one of his teams, but that team has a giant rivalry with another state team. So while I wear my Bahia team jersey proudly, there are Vitoria fans all wanting to tear it apart. It is great, I walk do the street and have people honk their horns and give me the thumbs up, where simultaneously I have little kids grab their hair and ask what the hell i am doing. 
Salvador is beautiful, it is a city about three times the size of Seattle, and the dispparity between the rich and the impoverished is much more noticeable than both SAJ and here. We have cute apartment like rooms here, with a mini stove and a fridge, so I just finished doing a little grocery shopping so we could make some stuff inside our rooms. This involved going through themarket and getting excited at every little fruit and boxed chocolate. But forty rais later, we hiked back to the hotel, and went traversing a bit through the city and beach, while the town pour rain upon us. Soaked, I sit hear drinking an espresso and letting you all know that I miss you all and hope you are well.

Some of my reasearch (rough rough draft):

Santo Antonio de Jesus-
The research we conducted in SAJ was to conduct a simple questionnaire
to best understand the situation and thoughts of people accessing the
public hospitals, to best formulate an opinion of the efficiency of
the public health system. We designed the questionnaire to be simple
as to not bore the interviewees, but with questions to best ascertain
information about accessing the public hospital. We asked name, age,
gender, if they used the public hospital, frequency of use, distance
and transportation, opinion on the efficiency, possi-ble problems, and
possible changes. We were able to obtain 36 subjects, each answering
one of our ques-tionnaires. Our research subjects ranged from
individuals we knew and random individuals accessing the HRSAJ
(Hospital Regional Santo Antonio de Jesus). We walked around the
outside of the hospital, as I learned about how the hospital operates.
We kept our questions for the individuals accessing the both the
administration and appointment wings of the hospital as to not disrupt
or disturb patients of the emergency rooms, all operating on an
ethical basis not to obstruct people. Brazilians are all extremely
kind and helpful individuals, we only had one or two individuals
decline taking the survey. Some of the statistics I felt most apparent
and interesting are as follows:
10/36=27% of people believe SUS is efficient
27/36=75% specifically mentioned issue with reception
9/36=25% of people believe SUS needs to change everything
28/36=78% of people believe SUS needs more and better quality of doctors
7/36=19% of individuals interviewed did not use SUS
18/36=50% live far away and need transportation
While the population of individuals interviewed was not well enough to
be a proper distribution of the SAJ population, it definitely echoes
some concerns and thoughts involving the SUS. A massive majority of
indi-viduals felt the system is inefficient. What becomes next
apparent is that most of the people who feel that SUS is inefficient
wish to change most are respectively the reception and amount of
doctors. This was not surprising whatsoever. There had to be at last
twenty people waiting on both occasions to the hospital to obtain
assistance. While the patients seemed quite patient, it must be so
frustrating to have to wait so long. On hot days there is just a fan
to cool patients down inside, and a black and white TV playing Soap
Opera reruns (at least there should be a color TV). On average there
were only two doctors working at the ap-pointment wing of the
hospital, which is hard to imagine when there are over twenty people
wait to be treat-ed, not to mention the many that must be inside the
waiting rooms inside. Both days we visited, there was only one doctor
working. At least a third of the subjects voiced that they felt
dehumanized and received rude treatment from the health professionals
at the public hospital. One mentioned that they even witnessed someone
reusing materials, which echoes patients concern on the quality of
available medical professionals. A majority of the subjects concluded
saying they would hire more doctors, and quarter mentioned that there
was a need for an overall change to the system, including the
structure it operates under. It also seems that people are in need of
more means of transportation to obtain treatment at the hospitals, as
half needed one, two or even three means of private transportation to
simply get there.

As of today, more than 80% of Brazilians depend on it. Though these
were enormous steps, over decade later, 2/3 of the hospitals, 70% of
the hospital beds and 87% of the specialized hospitals are private.
With an enormous population of 189,000,000 Brazil has made some great
steps in treating its vast population, and doing so in a human and
gallant way, being free. Though it is impossible to ignore the fact
that there are multitudes of people falling through the cracks in the
system, which makes change necessary. Based on the conclusions of our
research thus far, it seems that what people feel is most needed is an
increased amount of doctors and medical professionals, as well as a
change in the reception system utilized in the current hospi-tals.
Training new doctors and medical professionals take money, and the
problem is always finding where this money will come from. This brings
back the issues that I spoke to the psychologist at the clinic in
Amargosa. People want better public healthcare, but not higher taxes. Thus, what needs further consideration is finding the best allocation of money.