A brief case description
The Quechua is 78 years old and lives from farming. He has raised and fed eight children in his life. He was sent to an out-of-town hospital in the big city of Arequipa to be treated for his prostate cancer. But the journey abroad would have taken over ten hours and without friends in the city of two million people, he would have been lonely and helpless. So he stayed in his home village.
A few days ago he underwent emergency surgery at the Diospi Suyana Hospital. Part of his left colon (sigmoid colon) had twisted and cut off his blood supply. General surgeon Dr. Hilbert de Vries removed the dead tissue and created an artificial anus. The patient can probably be discharged home in the next few days.
Our patient is not an isolated case. His fate provides an insight into the struggle for survival of an entire ethnic group in the Andes of southern Peru. And it is precisely for these people that the Diospi Suyana Hospital was built. /KDJ
