QCOSTARICA – The government of Panama provided a mobile hospital, or field hospital, to support the care of the pandemic in Costa Rica.
The equipment, which will be installed in the San Vicente de Paúl Hospital, in Heredia, left Panama on Saturday for Costa Rica, with the support of eight Panamanian officials, reported the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS).
The mobile infrastructure will be installed in the north parking lot of the Heredia hospital, which was chosen after analysis by technical teams from the CCSS.
The land convoy, reported the CCSS, brings a part of the Mobile Medical Unit (UMM) with five hospital-type modules, electric and water supply plants, lavatories, and 40 beds.
This Sunday, another 13 officials arrived by air from Panama who will support the installation.
The Caja maintains several mobile units deployed and in operation that work in support and in parallel in the hospitals San Juan de Dios, La Anexión (Nicoya, Guanacaste), Monseñor Sanabria (Puntarenas), Guápiles (Pococí), and Hospital Tony Facio (Limon).
“These are very versatile mobile hospitals. Their design allows them to be used as a single unit or in separate segments, which has given us the possibility of maintaining active deployments in eight different parts of the country,” reported the CCSS press office.
The field hospital provided by Panama will deploy four modules in a first phase, which will be installed in the non-covid-19 pediatric emergency service and a vaccination center.
This, the CCSS reported, will allow the improvement of internal flows and the reorganization of the Emergency service in fixed facilities for covid-19 care.
The San Vicente de Paúl Hospital will install a battery of bathrooms and is working on the construction of cover to give access to this area. At the same time, it hastens the pace to have computer systems on time, including the Unique Digital Health Record (EDUS).
Next week, the fifth module will be installed to support the Adult Observation area of the Emergency service.
The San Vincent de Paul has developed several strategies to expand and adapt its care capacity to the increase in demand from patients with covid-19, in an effort not to neglect patients with other different pathologies.
Since May 7, for example, it has outfitted a warehouse in the San Isidro de Heredia Health Area to install a Hospital Extension Unit there with the capacity to serve up to 20 stable non-covid patients.
Most of the 29 hospitals in the CCSS have developed similar strategies, expanding services to Health Areas and CAIS, as has happened in Siquirres (Limón) and Cañas (Guanacaste).
