Doctors

Doctors in Ecuador have a good standard on education and can easily measure themselves with doctors in the US and Europe. They sometimes work in a different way due to life and culture here in Ecuador and therefor often talk about natural medicines as part of the treatment as food and herbs are still used in a good way to help treating for example bad stomachs and flue.
Many of the doctors also work in a hospital during the day while they have a private clinic at night due to that wages are not to good in the public clinics. The benefit from this in comparison with doctors in the US and Europe is that they constantly have to work hard with their hands and experience, "manually" you can say, as public hospitals often are lacking machines for blood pressure, pulse etc.

Hospitals And Clinics

Private hospitals and clinics often looks like and have the same standard and equipment as in the US or Europe. As they charge patients either directly or through an insurance they have another budget that allows them to also buy new and modern technology. Here you won't have to worry about medicines in for example the emergency as they will arrange everything for you and just put everything on your bill to pay when you leave.

Public hospitals have as good doctors as the private and in some case it is actually the same doctors but here you will need company as it often takes a long time to wait for your turn, especially in bigger towns and cities, and whatever you need for your treatment the doctor will write a recipe so you can buy everything in the hospital pharmacy. In emergency they will have the basic to stabilize you but after that you need to buy everything by yourself like meds, needles, bandages, gypsum etc and here is where your friend comes in but in worse case a nurse might be able to help you with this.

Either you get treatment in a private or public facility there is no need to be afraid of getting dirty injections etc. We see that participants sometimes believe this is the case if they go to a public hospital but I have heard more cases of that happening in the US or Europe than in Ecuador.

Pharmacies

Pharmacies are easy to find and around any hospital you will find a couple of them and at smaller clinics there are also in general at least one. They have a good way of only selling you what you need instead of the whole box with pills so if you have a headache you just ask for one pill and they will also give you a cup of water to swallow it down. This is a very helpful system as many people would not afford a treatment of different pills if they had to buy the whole box.

Laboratories

Laboratories are also easy to find so if you suspect that you have some problems with your stomach you can if you want just buy a sample box and bring a stool sample to the laboratory. They can then after a couple of hours up to maybe 2 day tell you if you are suffering from any infection, parasites or amoeba and in case you do you just take the results to a doctor who can tell you what treatment you need.

Tropical Diseases Hospital

In case you suspect that you are suffering from a tropical disease it is recommended that you make your way to Quito as soon as possible where they have a special hospital for this located in the central parts of the city. The main diseases that we thing about and that you more or less only find on the coast during some seasons are Dengue fever, Hemorrhage Dengue fever or Malaria.