Health Care

Sala de Curaciones del Hospital
    Health services were very different in the town of Comodoro Rivdavia and the company towns. In Comodoro Rivadavia, the building of a municipal hospital took a long time. Even doctors were hard to find during the early years. In 1909, a diphtheria epidemic broke out and neither a doctor or a pharmacy was available in Comodoro Rivadavia. Originally workers were sent to Buenos Aires, or other towns, for medical care. Eventually ethnic mutual aid societies emerged to provide some form of support in case of emergencies.


    In the company towns, medical services varied. The national oil company had a hospital site, built in 1923, and others followed later. In Astra the first hospital opened in 1925. The labor in the oil fields demanded a lot of manual labor and had a high risk of injury. The dangers ranged from: fires from the oil wells, dealing with the harsh Patagonia climate, drills slipping, broken cables, and accidental incapacitions occurred.

   The dangerous conditions lead to burns, broken bones, and even death. As a result of the working conditions, the oil companies suffered worker related losses and accidents. Below are two tables of the incidents in each company town.


Astra

Year      Workers      No. of Accidents     Annual %
1923                                  84
1924                                  96
1925                                  65
1926                                116
1927                                166
1928         584                 163                     26.0
1929         597                 123                     20.0
1930         615                   89                     14.5
1931         666                 100                     15.0
1932         679                 110                     16.0
1933                                  86
National Company Town

Year      Workers       Hospitalizations        Treatments
1921                                                                       1129
1926           3071                                                    2950
1927           2879                  2793                          5460
1928           2732                  2896                          5655
   * Source: Cite in Torres Dissertation


Development of a Better Medical System

        Even though all workers had to pay a portion of their salary to subsidize the fees for their treatment, the care was sectioned into first and second class patients. This segregation of workers coupled with the poor conditions of the hospital. In the National Company town, the workers complained of the situation and Captain Fliess (national company administrator at the time) improved the condition of the hospital and health care; mainly due to the fear that that the workers would revolt if nothing was done to improve the situation.
       Improvements:
  • Doctors available during a night shift
  • Free medical visits at the workers homes
  • Longer office hours 

 Workers Complaints About Hospital Conditions:  

"The hospital is a calamity, a disorder, it is dirty and the service is bad. Doctor Tristàn Martìnez does not look after those who by misfortune have to turn to him, and the food is very limited and overall is wretched. "

 Hospital Room, Astra  " T he doctor was one in name only, and he does not look at anybody; the only things that he knows is to prescribe purgatives...He does not have the courage to cure grave patients due to his incapability and sends them to Buenos Aires, and when they arrive to the capital city the illness cannot be remedied."


     The health care system continued to go through many changes. If a worker was ill or hurt, then he was considered to be layed off and he would not receive any wage money. Eventually an accident law stated that oil companies had to pay compensation for a situation of death or loose of a body limb. Yet, if the worker suffered from a long term illness and was unable to work; he was considered unemployed. 
     In the company towns revisions were  made to help workers and families of workers. Organizations, such as the Asociaciòn Mutual de Empleados y Obreros, allocated aid and support for the families of workers. The oil companies also helped by giving the salary of a deceasesd worker to his family, aiding workers who fell ill for an extended amount of time, or hiring the widows of deceased workers.
     The hospital facilities included odontology, obstetrics, radiology, a pharmacy, physiotherapy, surgery room, vacinations. The oil companies also attended to womens health. A midwife made house calls to the company workers and helped in the deliveries.

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Health Care Photo Gallery

Personal Accounts and Translations


Midwife
Maria Christova Minkova (de Petroff)
Explains the "midwife" of YPF
Clip
Translation

María del Carmen Torres

María del Carmen Torres:

Story of her brother's birth during a mjor snowstorm.
Clip
Translation

Housing                               Education                              Community Life Home

Sources:   Torres, Susana Beatriz. Two Oil Company Towns in Patagonia: European Immigrants, Class, and Ethnicity (1907 -1933). Dissertation. New Brunswick, New Jersey. May, 1995.