Our Visit to the Regional Hospital in Cuilapa

Yesterday morning, we accompanied a group of Senior Missionaries to the Regional Hospital in Cuilapa to give baby kits to the mothers of newborns in the maternity ward of the hospital and some gifts to the children in the pediatric unit.  It was an interesting drive down through rural areas on the road to El Salvador, CA1.  We drove through the towns of El Cerinal and Barbarena and finally arrived at the hospital in Cuilapa.  It is rated the third best public hospital in Guatemala, but it isn't a place you would want to have your child receive care.  The conditions of the hospital were nothing like you would see in the United States.  It makes you wonder why a country that has malls as nice as anything in the States has hospitals like the one we visited. Some say it is because there is drug money behind the malls and government corruption keeps public funds from getting to the hospitals.  I have no idea if there is any truth to that, but the difference between the malls and the hospitals is stark.  But the children in the hospital were beautiful, and Sister Smith was in her element sharing the gifts we had brought with the babies and their mothers.  She even suited up to visit the babies in the nursery.  She said that should be her job, just to hold and care for the babies in the nursery.

There were sights, however, that tore at our heart strings.  Two little infants in the hospital had been abandoned by their parents.  One infant boy of Quiché (a Mayan people) parents had serious heart problems, and his parents had left him, presumably because they felt they couldn't care for him.  The other was a little premie in an incubator whose twin had not survived.  He too had been abandoned by his parents. These two will be sent to an orphanage for adoption when they are healthy enough to leave the hospital.  Their chances for adoption, however, are not good.  The international adoption system in Guatemala was entirely shut down in 2008 due to widespread corruption, kidnapping, and baby selling.  In its hey day one of every 110 babies born in Guatemala ended up in the United States for adoption, many stolen from the birth parents.  Lawyers/notaries in Guatemala charged $35,000 plus expenses for every one of these babies placed for adoption, almost 5,000 per year.  It was big business, and subject to corruption.  Now since 2008, the system has been shut down while reforms are implemented.  So the chances for adoption of these and who knows how many children like them are bleak.  It broke our hearts to think of these two little ones abandoned like that.