The first COVID-19 patients were transferred five days ago from overflowing public hospitals to the new “Hospital El Salvador” built in a reconverted convention center in the nation’s capital. Construction of the $75-million hospital — designed to be a permanent facility — began in March. The first completed section contains 400 beds, 105 of them fully-equipped ICU beds — doubling existing ICU capacity in the public system. The rest of the planned 1,000 ICU beds are scheduled to open in two phases: 664 in a few weeks, and the remaining 231 by the first weeks in August, along with 1,000 other intermediate beds.
In inaugurating the first section on June 23, President Nayib Bukele emphasized that this is not a field hospital, which in El Salvador’s rainy climate would be repeatedly ruined by floods. He was proud that the project is not being done on the cheap, defeating those who insisted a public hospital should just paint over cement floors, to save money. Instead, the floors of the old convention center were ripped up, and 15 km of copper tubing carrying oxygen from two big tanks was installed under new granite floors. The equipment is modern, as good as the First World has, he added. It has its own water supply and pump, and six electrical generators so that the ventilators and other medical equipment will continue to function when power is lost.
The biggest bottleneck now faced is the same which faces most developing sector countries, and harder to solve: assembling the skilled medical manpower to staff the hospital. This is where the Schiller Institute’s “Apollo Mission” approach to global health security is so critical. At this point, in El Salvador overwhelmed public hospitals have to transfer some of their personnel when they send patients to the new facility. The government has sent urgent appeals to Guatemala and Spain to send in medical teams; the University of El Salvador is eager to use the hospital to train new nurses, doctors, and other personnel on a crash basis; and local medical personnel are being sought.
