It is amazing how quickly ideas and expectations can become reality. It seems like just yesterday I was envisioning all these imagined settings and now, a week later, I have been overloaded with places, people, structures and setups. No matter where I am in this huge (and expanding) system, I cannot help but have my breath taken away by Barretos Cancer Hospital. In a nutshell this week was mostly touring the facilities of HCB, which include the prevention department (where we are, also seen in Figure 1), the lovely children’s hospital (Figure 2), the mobile units (Figures 4,5 and 6), the mobile unit factory, palliative care center and the Ambulatorio Medico de Especialidades (a secondary hospital). Along with these places we also met the people that make what was once one man’s dream a reality. Nutshell aside this week’s tours introduced us to the amazing force that is HCB. A force that seizes the country’s universal healthcare and provides state of the art screening and treatment to all the people of Brazil they can reach.
Figure 1 (top): The cancer prevention department
Figure 2 (bottom): The Children’s Cancer Hospital (aka “Lulinha”)
As I was becoming acquainted with this place I began to take note of all the curious vehicles that brandished HCB’s logo and realized they nicely illustrated what I grasped from the hospital’s beginnings and its bright future. First is the old Volkswagen (or “combe” as they call it here). That and the pickup truck I have yet to capture in an image.
Figure 3: HCB’s Kombi
These two classic modes of transport seem to embody the time when the whole hospital started. The founder, Paulo Prata, was from a wealthy farming family in Barretos and noticed the complete lack of cancer treatment options for the poor families of Brazil. He began funding HCB mostly out of pocket. Meeting a then unmet need, his hospital was soon dear to many. When financial troubles started threatening to close HCB’s doors, Prata’s farmer friends began donating in the best way they knew how… with cows, horses and various other farm animals. And so began the auctions that proved how widespread and deep the love for this hospital had grown with all the animals auctioned off for hundreds and thousands of reais (the Brazilian currency). Until this day the hospital only receives enough from the government to cover 25% of its expenses; the other 75% covered by donations. This to me is a crazy concept that I doubt any economic principle could explain.
The next honorary member of the fleet of HCB vehicles are the mobile units.
Figure 4: Mobile unit stationed outside the prevention department
I hesitate to call them trucks because of how normal it makes them sound. These vehicles are equipped with mini waiting rooms, mammogram machines, small skin lesion surgery rooms and more. The beautiful thing that I see in them are their representation of this amazing provider of healthcare not stopping at its city’s borders. Instead of being content with excellence at home, HCB gave their love and care wheels in the form of 16 (and counting) cancer prevention mobile units making the cancer prevention program at HCB the largest in the world.
Figure 5: A smaller mobile unit for cervical cancer screening
(partners with Rice in research, hence familiar logo)
Figure 5: Nikhil and I with a mammogram and pap smear mobile unit in Viradouro (small town near Barretos)
No matter the form, this hospital fits its nickname perfectly. The hospital of love. A love that knows no boundaries.
Check out yet another vehicle with the logo of Barretos Cancer Hospital and see how love reopened the small city’s airport!
http://creativity-online.com/work/hospital-do-cancer-de-barretos-flight-against-cancer-case/35736