Money Is the Problem : Tijuana Burn Center Slow to Become a Reality

A little more than a year ago, a 23-year-old American woman on a camping trip south of Tijuana with her parents suffered burns over 30% of her body in an accident.

There was no specialized burn center nearby and it took her parents a week to transport her across the border to the UC San Diego Medical Center’s Burn Center. Doctors there noted that in Mexico she “received barely adequate” treatment, permitting unnecessary scarring, said Dr. John Hansbro, UCSD associate professor of surgery.

Now, groups on both sides of the border hoping to avoid similar horror stories are working to establish a burn center in Tijuana this year. Such a center would be a source of hope to people in northwest Mexico who suffer severe burns in accidents.

Space for the burn center already has been set aside on the second floor of the Tijuana General Hospital, an area that is empty except for six beds, built-in cabinets, sinks and unattached plumbing.

It is the shell of a specialized burn center which, if opened, would treat severely burned people, including Americans who need help in emergencies before being transported out of the country.

The unit, which would serve an estimated 4 million people, was set aside after Rotary clubs in Tijuana, San Diego and La Mesa promised to provide supplies and equipment.

But the supplies are locked up and the equipment lies idle until the hospital can find the money to pay the 15 to 20 staff people needed to run the unit, said Miguel Angel Robles, the hospital’s former director who quit recently because of the institution’s financial woes.

“This is something very specialized . . . there is too much personnel needed. It would be too expensive,” Angel Robles said.

Members of the Old Mission, La Mesa and the Downtown Tijuana Rotary clubs, with the help of Rotary International, have raised a total of $74,000 toward staffing and operating the center, said George Dooley, a spokesman for the Old Mission Rotary.

Rotarians hope the amount will mean that the center can be opened as early as May, Dooley said.

But Hansbro said the $74,000 “would only be a drop in the bucket.”

“One badly burned person here costs about $100,000,” he said. “It is very sophisticated care we are talking about, like cardiac care.”

For a while, at least, severely burned victims will have to travel to San Diego for expensive specialized treatment or go to a burn center in Mexico City, said Elizabeth San Vicente of the San Diego Burn Institute.

Yet the UCSD Burn Center, which serves two counties, has only 14 beds, said unit supervisor Wendy Carroll. She said the San Diego facility must be selective, taking only people able to pay for the treatment or poor American citizens injured in northwest Mexico.

The UCSD center will accept a poor Mexican national if he is severely burned in the United States but will turn him away if he is burned in his own country, she added.

“We would advise they be taken to Mexico City,” she said. “Mexico City has a good burn unit.”

“If somebody shows up with minor to moderate burns and they come up here specifically to be treated, we will send them back . . . Why should American taxpayers pay for the treatment of illegals? We can’t assume everybody’s problems. I sympathize, but we can’t be everything to everybody,” she said.

Robles said the Tijuana hospital, which could step into the breach, did not receive enough money from hospital authorities in Mexico City to operate this year.

The fate of the center, located in the River Valley area of Tijuana, has been uncertain since 1979, when it was proposed by two of the Rotary Clubs, Dooley said.

And, “considering the economic condition in Mexico, it doesn’t look very promising,” he added.

Robles agreed it was unrealistic to think that the expense of a new burn unit could be borne by the health ministry of the economically strapped country. And the system of allocating money to individual hospitals throughout Mexico provides no guarantee that money donated for the Tijuana burn center would be used for its intended purpose, he said.

All money donated to specific hospitals in Mexico must first go to Mexico City, the nation’s capital, and from there be distributed by the national health secretary to hospitals throughout the country, said Dr. Porfirio Garcia-Gonzalez, director of the Department of Health’s Tijuana district office.

But Robles says there may be a way around that problem. He has recently become president of the Foundation for the Tijuana General Hospital, a nonprofit organization formed to funnel donated funds and equipment specifically to the hospital.

And the burn center is one of the projects the foundation has targeted for support, Robles said.

Meanwhile, everyone concerned hopes the burn center can be opened soon. “The center already has a plastic surgeon on staff,” Garcia-Gonzalez said. “And if the Rotary clubs would finance staffing and operation, it could feasibly be opened for service in a few months.”