A few years ago, I took an injured employee to the hospital in Keneiba, Mali and had him admitted. The hospital was a windowless, circular mud hut with a thatched roof and only one door. The hospital had a dirt floor, was about thirty feet in diameter, and about fifteen patients were lying on straw mats on the dirt floor arranged in a circle around the wall.
I happened to arrive just as the doctor and two interns (you could tell they were doctors because they were wearing dirty white smocks) were making their rounds, and I watched them as they knelt by each patient to give them an injection all with the same needle. About every third patient, an intern would sharpen the needle, but no attempt was made to sterilize the needle. As an estimated forty percent of the local population was HIV positive at the time, it made that needle the most dangerous thing I have ever encountered.
No, they don’t have nice hospitals in Africa.
dirt floor...check. idiot doctor...check.
My “doctor” wore a suit and had one book for reference which he thumbed through for a very long time. It said “British Medical Reference” or something like that and it was old. I nearly grabbed it out of his hands he took so long.
Finally someone suggested I go to a pharmacy in another part of town and the two Pakastani guys running it sent me to an address where they said someone could help me. My taxi took me over rutted roads into a suburban area and we stopped at a house that was actually a clinic. Inside, amazingly was a Dr from Johns Hopkins!
When I asked to pay him he said he wouldn’t accept money...what he said was “pray for us”.