This week the nation signed into effect over 2,000 pages of legislation on the topic of health care. In the spirit of that effort, I think we should consider the status of our very own Loyola health care. However, I think 500 words will have to suffice — after all, no one actually reads documents that are over 2,000 pages long.

Nestled in the basement of the Danna Center is Loyola student health. While no one expects a full service hospital, students do expect to have a place to go whenever minor ailments strike.

Naturally, minor ailments do not follow the workweek, nor do they take weekends off. Unfortunately, student health does. If you become sick, your only opportunity to go to student health is between 8:30 a.m. and 4:45 p.m., Monday through Friday, provided that none of those days are school vacations such as Mardi Gras break.

As student health by definition serves a college, you would think that it’s hours would be such that it is not open only during times when most students have classes. However, that is exactly when student health is open.

As if that window weren’t small enough, because student health is only open 24.5 percent of the time in an average week, you also have to deal with the lines that come with a shortage of a service. All of a sudden, free health care at the student health center begins costing time waiting to be seen and time waiting for student health to open the next day or the next week.

Even if, for some reason, student health cannot extend its hours of operation, it could extend to students the courtesy of providing a contact point for after hours emergencies. This shouldn’t be too demanding; in fact Tulane’s general student health center currently offers this to its over 10,000 students.

Time issues aside, student health offers to provide primary care for some 4,585 students (2008 figures), but employs only one nurse practitioner and no doctor. While we do have an excellent student-to-faculty ratio of 11:1, the student-to-nurse practitioner ratio of 4,585:1 doesn’t sound so excellent.

As noted in the parenthetical, 4,585 is an old figure. The school has grown and is growing. Keeping this in mind, shouldn’t student health grow too?

Sure you could go to Oschner, Touro or some other off-brand hospital in the New Orleans area, but if we are required to live on campus, which half of the student body is, then we should have basic services available to us when we need them.

We have all been in New Orleans long enough to know that not being able to go to student health over Mardi Gras weekend is no small issue. To put it in perspective, if you get hurt after 4:45 the Friday of Mardi Gras break, student health can do nothing for you until 8:30 Wednesday morning the following week. 

The bottom line is student health should be available to keep the student body healthy whenever the student body is at Loyola.

Zach Lombardo can be reached at [email protected]