by Rod Hughes
There’s a lot of rubbish out there and, unfortunately, it isn’t all in pro- and anti- CAFTA propaganda campaigns.
The Ministry of Public Heath estimates that 300 tons of garbage is dumped in rivers and vacant lots in the country each day. But the government has a plan…
Costa Ricans produce 11,000 tons of refuse daily, far more prolific than any industry here. But the good news is that fully 80% is recycleable. The ministries of Health and Environment have set their sights on this potential gold mine and have come up with a solid waste management plan to go into effect in September, the daily La Nación reported today.
The plan has been under study with the aid of the German government for the last eight months. According to German advisor Andreas Elmenhorst, in his homeland organic rubbish is nearly all recycled. “You should look at refuse as a resource,” he told the paper.
This is good news for a country drowning in garbage both at overloaded landfills and in eyesore, health-hazard improvised dumps. Although plastic is an organic substance, it is biodegradeable in the slowest sense—a plastic bag from the supermarket takes 150 years to disintegrate!
The program must be two pronged. First industries must be established to recycle. Second, Ticos must be educated to the ills of promiscuous dumping, poisoning their own rivers and spoiling the enjoyment of a naturally beautiful country by littering.
And the latter may be the longest task of all.

by Rod Hughes
To most of us, the nuts and bolts of medical administration is a mystery hidden in hospital and clinic file drawers.
But according to a story in the daily paper La Nación today, the system the Social Security Administration (Caja) uses to schedule operations has a screw loose.
The surgeons, says the story, use notebooks to remind them who needs an operation and when it is to be performed. The often life-or-death info is scrawled, usually in pencil, in the legendarily undecipherable handwriting of doctors and often lacks a few facts—like the patient’s phone number so he can be notified when and where the operation will take place.
Caja personnel call this system “manual agendas” or “under the arm” or “desk drawer,” says the article.
Doctors often defend the chaotic system by saying that the office staff of most hospitals are overworked as it is. And, in truth, La Nación has run stories in the past about how most vital medical records are passed through typewriters—a machine that many of the younger Internet generation may have seen only once, in some dusty storeroom. They abound throughout the Caja network from the most rural small clinic to the central offices on Av. 2, San Jose.
What is the result of this antiquated public medical service? How about the woman who has been patiently awaiting varicose vein surgery for 16 years? Others have had it easier; they have been waiting only since 1995 or so. (There is the answer of why recipients of medical services are called “patients.”)
Here is the data the newspaper gleaned from Caja records. Today, some 260,000 Costa Ricans are awaiting medical atttention, those who haven’t died yet. Of those, 40,000 are on the surgery list. Another 134,000 are awaiting diagnostic exams and 85,000 more are waiting to see specialists.
Sloppy record keeping also accounts for the existence of corruption–biombos, is the local word for when doctors are slipped money under the table so a patient can be pushed up to the top of the waiting list. In the past, doctors have been fired from the Caja for this practice but, as long as the list for free public medical services remains endless and the desperate and impatient are willing, greedy medics can be found.
And sloppy records make it hard for them to be found out.

by Rod Hughes
The under-20-year-old All Star team from Costa Rica lost 1-0 against their Japanese counterparts yesterday in the world soccer championship tourney in Canada, edging closer to an early elimination.
The team played by the book, fearing to make a mistake, losing the element of surprise and therefore lost. But what do you expect, after the savaging they recieved from local sportwriters after their 1-0 loss to Nigeria? And mistakes happen in soccer, momentarily and unexpectedly. Take the error of a very good midfielder, Celso Borges, at minute 67 that allowed Japan’s Amotu Tanaka to boot in the only goal of the game, for example. It would have made little difference if earlier attacks had been rammed home with confidence. The score would have been 2-1.
And even local sportwriters must admit that when they were good in Victoria, they looked very good, indeed. As the game went on, the attacks were pressed forward more positively but also with an element of desperation that leads to imprecision.
“The truth is that there are no words (to describe the feeling) when the team plays well only to lose clear options to score,” a frustrated forward Luis Stewart Pérez told the daily La Nacion.
So the blue, white and red team is on the brink of going home, with no points, the same as the Scottish eleven, whom they have yet to play and whose division they share. As La Nación’s sportswriter Rodrigo Calvo says, only a miracle can send them into a second round. But in 1990, the senior All Stars made it into the second round of the World Cup by beating a Scottish team.
Maybe history will repeat itself. Anything can happen in this game…