“I knocked on the doors of several clinics, but no one answered,” says Ivis, who came to the center to get care for her daughter.
Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 23 November 2024 — The night Ivis arrived at the Cienfuegos Pediatric Hospital with her daughter in her arms, she could not have imagined that institutional neglect and the rest of the crises affecting Cuban Public Health would have had such a profound effect on the center. Because the care is specialized for children and adolescents, the hospital had always had better conditions than others in the province, but the day her daughter suffered an epileptic episode, “there was not even a doctor in the waiting room.”
The bad times for Ivis began, however, before arriving at the Paquito González Cueto Pediatric Hospital. “At seven in the evening the girl began to have strong convulsions and I immediately called the hospital to send me an ambulance, but no one answered the phone,” the mother told 14ymedio. “In my desperation I went out into the street and found a máquina [shared taxi]. Although it may seem unbelievable, the driver charged us 1,000 pesos from our house in the Pastorita neighborhood to the hospital.”
Paying the price for the transport was the least of it, laments the Cienfuegos native, who after entering the Paquito González Cueto did not see “a soul.” “I knocked on the doors of several clinics, but no one answered. Then the security guard appeared, who told me that the doctor on duty was eating and that we had to wait for him,” she explains, pointing out that the memory of that night still bothers her.
Ivis waited for about half an hour until the health worker returned to the office.
Ivis waited for about half an hour until the paramedic returned to the office. During the time she was waiting, she points out, she did not see any medical personnel, whether nurses, laboratory technicians or cleaning assistants, pass by. “They had already told me that this was bad, but I never imagined that at 8:00 at night in the corridors of the Pediatric Hospital there would be no one to help the patients. In my nervousness I asked a woman if she had already been seen, and she told me that she was there to charge her phone, because there was no electricity at home,” she says.
After going to the doctor’s office, the mother stressed that the doctor’s care was good, but in the current conditions of the health system, with a chronic lack of supplies and medicines, there was little that the health worker could do. “He prescribed a course of clonazepam, but he himself told me that there was none in the hospital pharmacy. Luckily, since the girl is epileptic, I always have these medicines on hand, even if they cost me dearly on the informal market,” says Ivis.
The cienfueguera gave the medicine to her daughter and sat in the waiting room to give it time to take effect. “I started talking to a woman who was there with her grandson. It turned out that she had been waiting since 4:00 in the afternoon for a vehicle to take her to Cruces. The child has respiratory problems and an ambulance or one of the taxis that work with the hospitals was supposed to take him home,” she recalls.
The elderly woman assured Ivis that “she had a hard time even giving her grandson a spray”
The elderly woman, desperate from fatigue and the approach of night, told Ivis that, despite having brought her grandson to the provincial capital seeking specialized care, “she had a hard time even giving him a spray.”
Outside, sitting on the hospital porch under the dim lights of the ceiling, some young people were talking and laughing. According to Ivis, “they are from nearby neighborhoods who, instead of going to the malecón where there is no electricity due to the blackouts and they are exposed to being assaulted, they come here to take advantage of the electricity a little.”
The woman says that after seeing them, an idea came to her mind: “In this country everything is backwards. Parents would like not to have to bring their sick children to those dirty and dark hospitals, but healthy children come on their own for a few hours of electricity and cool night air.”
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
