Today I visited the Windhoek Central Hospital. We passed through corridors, went up and down in an elevator and we managed to have Violet seen for the her swollen eyes. She was at first incredulous that we would be seen without having to wait for hours and hours:"Last time I waited the whole afternoon" she told me.When we first arrived, we had a problem - Violet did not have the thirty dollars necessary for the user fee. So we went to the medical superintendent's office, where we were directed to go to admissions. We walked to the reception of the OPD , where my question of "is this admissions" was met with the answer of "I don't know" from the puzzled woman behind the iron meshgrid barrier. Nonetheless, she directed us to the eye clinic, where Violet appeared to be the only patient. She was seen by a registered nurse and we came back down, in an elevator that went up and down several times before reaching the G floor.
At the medical superintendents office, Violet got her stamp of approval to receive medication, and the only question the secretary asked was "Did the Doctor already see you?" which was in Afrikaans, a language Violet does not speak, but I do. In fact, I know this secretary, since I have been in that office many times when my mother's friend was the superintendent at the hospital. Violet later boasted that because she was with me, she was able to circumvent the long waiting process and access her medicines without paying:"I went with Mulongeni's son!"Being linked in, so to speak, with the hospital staff, being known, being a member of a well known family, this is what is commonly believed to permit one efficient access to services in Namibia.Though I do not know if this is the case, because the woman at the admissions was exceedingly friendly without knowing my name. When I asked her whether it was alright for Violet to go to the eye clinic without a health passport she reassured me:"They have everything there, don't think I will just leave you to go somewhere" She did not abandon, she helped us and I believe that made all the difference.
To what extent are interpersonal networks important in determining the outcome of a patients visit to a hospital?