Dr. Lisany Mejia Contreras

María Estebana Hernández with her daughter waiting to be attended at EBAIS Nosara.

Flora Chinchilla Mora

Pharmacy in Nosara
A new pharmacy is in the final stages of opening its’ doors to the public and providing the Nosara area with a complete supply of pharmaceuticals, effectively changing local area healthcare services as the community knows it. Jose Eliécer Barrantes Venegas and his wife Marcela Paniagua Carvajal await the very last permit required by law. If all goes well and the permit is obtained, “our idea is to be able to open the beginning of July, [and] it’s very probable that from the start we will be opening even on Sundays”, Eliécer informs us. The Botica Nosara pharmacy building is located 600 meters south of the EBAIS Nosara Health Clinic, and will offer “all kinds of pharmaceuticals from antibiotics, injections, saline solutions, and also over the counter drugs such as aspirin, Alka-Seltzer” and the like, according to Marcela. She also explains to us that “the pharmacy building is located directly in front of our house, so even if it is closed, if people urgently need medical supplies, they can call us”. Eliécer and Marcela can be contacted at home at 2682-5149, or on their cell phones at 8821-9023 and 8359-9393.

Left: 19-year-old patient Alan Alvarez

EBAIS Nosara relocates to Garza Clinic every Wednesday
Last month’s article reported that the EBAIS Nosara Health Clinic “urgently needs another team so that they can attend to the patients that are left without appointments, because some people wait here from 7:00am until 2:00 or 3:00pm” without receiving medical attention. Upon further investigation, The Voice of Nosara has come to understand that the 6 person medical team attending to the people of Nosara’s EBAIS actually relocates themselves and the entire practice to the Garza Health Clinic every Wednesday to attend to people there who are unable to arrive at the doors of the Nosara clinic. Dr. Lisany Mejila Contreras tells VON in her most recent interview “we have to transport medications, documentation and expensive machinery” back and fourth between Nosara and Garza, about 15 kilometers of unpaved and poorly maintained road, each way. In order to attend to the community of Garza, EBAIS Nosara must close its’ doors once a week meaning, “there is no [medical] consultation [in Nosara] on Wednesdays”, Dr. Mejia tells us. In her opinion, the current system of moving the health clinic from one town to the other once a week “does not fulfill basic requirements [and] there are many things” that need to be improved upon in order to offer adequate healthcare to both communities mentioned.

More options for affordable and accessible healthcare
In last month’s issue VON stated Dr. Kattia attends to patients “for a varying fee of around 24.000 colones a consultation.” In the current issue, she would like to clarify that “the official fee established by the Colegio de Medicos is around 24.000 colones, however [she reserves] the right to offer a discount, usually around 50%... depending on the complexity of the consultation.”

In the same article, VON stated that Dr. Porras “is not currently working with the [governmental institutions] CCSS or INS, and therefore her patients must pay for their consultations themselves”, which is true. However Dr. Porras elaborates that she does collaborate with the CCSS funded “Sistema de Medicina Mixto, [which] allows ensured patients to receive and pay for a private consultation, and later receive all the medicine, treatments and diagnostics from the CCSS.” She adds that people who are insured by INS can “go to a private practitioner, pay for the consultation, collect the receipts and present them to INS, and be reimbursed” by the government for their visit to the private doctor.

We will be happy to answer your health-related questions, please send them to: [email protected]

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN OUR JUNE ARCHIVE

Fabiola Alvarez