We had a couple experiences last week with Tanzanians needing health care which made us thankful to be in a country without socialized medicine. In fact Tanzania was once socialist and even then I don't think they had socialized medicine because the government cannot afford it and there was no way to deliver it. Here each person takes responsibility for their own health care and few people have, or can afford, insurance, it is pay as you go.
Sele, our gardener, came to work last week in severe pain from an infected tooth. He could not work and was sitting holding his head, perhaps thinking how nice it is to not have government supported health care. Here dental work is done by extracting the bad tooth and that costs 40,000 tsh or about $30. Sele doesn't have 40,000 because he just gets by on 70,000 tsh/ month. We gave him some ibuprofen, which helped a lot, and he was able to get up and work. We also gave him money to get his tooth taken care of and he came the next day and showed us the gaping hole where his tooth had been and was very happy to be pain free. Sele is in his early 20's and it make you wonder how many teeth he will have left when he is our age.
On the other end of the extreme, a women that owns a successful business with her husband here was in severe need of gall bladder surgery. She rushed into Dar to go to a private facility with 8 patient beds and well trained Doctors from Cuba. There her scans were sent out to Nairobi and India for consultation and she had state of the art laparoscopic surgery to remove the gall bladder and stones. All this cost $8,000 and although they had insurance it does not cover care at this private facility. They got excellent care but at the cost of 16 times the per capita income in Tanzania. It is nice for us to know of this facility in case someone from our Bega Kwa Bega groups ever needs critical care on a trip.
Sue and I fortunately have been extremely healthy on our trip with no distress from food at all and just a good old Minnesota head cold that they have here too.
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