Indonesians have an interesting term for the word "hospital." We call it "rumah sakit," which translates back verbatim into English as a "sick house." It can either mean a "house for the sick" or a "house that it sick," and I can tell you that neither meaning has any association with "hospitality."
Rumah sakit is semantically ambiguous, but we have lived with this term since time immemorial--we tend to not question stuff like this anyway. Subconsciously the term brings to mind a place where patients go for medication. Rumah sakit is a place for us to try to get our well being back (or harbor hope against hope in very unfortunate cases, which aren't rare, regrettably).
Truth is, few places are more dangerous than rumah sakit. So, in a way rumah sakit is really a sick house. Healthy persons who go to hospitals, especially babies or minors whose immune systems have yet to develop, invariably run the risk of being contaminated. Why, because hospitals make a perfect breading ground for germs; they are a most ideal place for contracting communicable diseases. This we often forget or neglect. The points above suggest why hospitals should be located at a certain distance from residential areas and why they must to be properly managed.
So, the Indonesian term contains a warning that we must stay away from this place as much as we can. If we must be there at all, we must get the hell out of it asawpc!
Er, that's short for: As Soon As We Possibly Can ;)
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