2024-02-17 07:00:08
“We don’t know what is worse, the plague or the lack of attention,” laments Clara a few meters from Clinic 24 of the Pedro del Toro Saad health area in the city of Holguín. Outside the premises, located on the road that goes to the Mirador de Mayabe, a fetid liquid accumulates that flows from the sewage pipes. The dumping began last December, less than half a year after the property underwent “capital repair.”
“When we were getting our hopes up that we were going to be able to have higher quality care, we started to see how this was filled with sewage,” explains Clara, a diabetic patient with high blood pressure problems who lives a few meters from the office. “The doctor and nurse immediately reported the problem, but it is clear that you cannot work there because it is a health hazard. Between the bad odors and the feces floating at the entrance, no hygiene can be maintained.”
The office, in the Hilda Torres neighborhood, serves 1,032 patients in the area, including two pregnant women. After closing the premises, the health authorities in the area referred the patients to office 25, which is about 200 meters away, but the congestion in the consultations and the excess of daily cases is detrimental to the care that the neighbors can receive. “It’s not even worth going to the other one, you spend hours and nothing, you have to go back to your house because it can’t cope.”
A week ago, after several reports and complaints, a vehicle specialized in evacuating the contents of the septic tank arrived at office 24. “He had to come several times because the volume of waste to be evacuated is very large, but he only came once because there is no fuel,” laments another resident of the area. “Everyone knows this, they have called the Polyclinic, Hygiene and Epidemiology and everyone who needed to be called to report this, but nothing.”
The office, in the Hilda Torres neighborhood, serves 1,032 patients in the area, including two pregnant women.
With a very aged population, the Hilda Torres District also has a rugged topography. “People who are in wheelchairs, the elderly with walkers and all of us who suffer from some mobility problem find it very difficult to get to the other office because there is a steep hill,” adds the neighbor. “But once you arrive, then you have to be patient because it is always full of people, I estimate that in total there are more than 2,000 people being treated there now.”
The family doctor program in Cuba, which was originally designed for each office to provide care to between 600 and 700 patients, has been deteriorating with the exodus of professionals, the departure of others on official missions abroad and the problems of infrastructure. What was one of the health pillars of the Island is going through difficult times due to lack of investments and loss of qualified personnel.
On the road to the Mirador de Mayabe the panorama could not be more emblematic of what happens throughout the entire Island: a closed office, the sewage waters covering part of its entrance and the logo of a rod with a coiled snake still hanging on the façade of the facility. The reptile seems to be waiting for the moment when the waste extraction vehicle returns and the patients can return to the benches, stretchers and blood pressure monitors.
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