The
hospital at Pechea lies on the northern edge of the village and is 17
miles north-east of Galati. It is a general hospital with the usual
buildings housing the different departments. After Stuart and I arrived,
we 
unloaded
the trailer and stored everything in the magazin ( store room) which had a
iron grill over the door. Everything has to be kept locked or it 
will
disappear. This happens in many countries where people find it difficult
just to survive. We stayed in one of the unused buildings and had rooms, a
toilet and shower all to ourselves.
The
buildings stretched over a large area and were patrolled as usual by a
guard with his dog. 
There
were lots of trees in the grounds, mostly walnuts. As usual many of the
patients where sitting and walking in these grounds. The building were
in a bad state of repair, the director telling me that they did not have
enough money
for medicines let alone repair work. You can also see this by the
condition of the corridor outside the directors office. The bar you can
see across the corridor is there to stabilize the building against
earthquakes.
It
is not just the buildings that are old and in need of replacing. All the
equipment, plumbing and electrical wiring needs replacing to. They still
use the old porcelain fuses, many of them containing nails as they
cannot get the fuse wire. The wire they use is aluminum and they are
joined together by twisting in the junction boxes.
The
staff, as usual, were very friendly, but they could not understand why
someone comes out to România to help when they do not get paid for
the 
work.
It is still the communist mentality. We did not realize at first that
the physiotherapist we met was blind, there is a lesson there for our
hospitals.
This
is the dispensary in Pechea, a nice looking building from the outside.
It is when you enter that you see the real conditions they work in. Many
of the 
dispensaries
look nice from the outside, such as this one at Cusa Voda. They are
usually whitewashed, but this does not last very long.
Many of the hospitals keep their own
animals, such as these pigs, which are fed on the scraps from the kitchen
and does not really cost the hospital anything to keep. The piglets can be
kept for fattening or to be sold, which brings in extra revenue.
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