The Salvador Allende hospital, located in the municipality of Cerro, in Havana, will open its emergency room this Monday without sufficient staff and its doctors will not be able to request laboratory tests due to an alarming lack of workers. Sources from that health center, known as La Covadonga, revealed to 14ymedio that the young laboratory technicians resigned en masse and without prior notice, “because they left the country.”
In addition to the serious situation that already existed on the Island due to the lack of reagents, which for a long time have prevented even the correct diagnosis of dengue in the midst of the current epidemic, now there is the lack of personnel to carry out the tests.
“Now in Cuba we can’t even get sick. This is serious,” confesses the same concerned source, who also adds how impossible it is to ask for reinforcements because “there is a shortage of personnel in all the hospitals in Havana.”
“Now in Cuba we can’t even get sick. This is serious,” the same source confesses with concern. “There is a shortage of personnel in all the hospitals in Havana”
The news comes the same day The 1st Medical Tourism and Wellness Fair begins at Pabexpowhich will last until October 21 and in which the Cuban Medical Services Marketer (CSM) will try to sell Cuba’s health excellence.
This lack of personnel contrasts with the constant export of health workers to other countries, including Mexico. The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that this October 13 another 84 Cuban doctors would arrive as part of the contingent hired to reduce “the deficit of specialists”, and there are already 436 health workers on the island distributed by different states, in remote areas or violence from the neighboring country.
Last week the agreement signed in August for 497 Cuban doctors to travel to Calabria, in southern Italy, to alleviate the lack of personnel in the region was also the subject of debate in the European Parliament. Several MEPs supported the letter from Prisoners Defenders in which this Madrid-based NGO reminded the Calabrian governor, Roberto Occhiuto, of the conditions of semi-slavery in which the island’s health workers carry out their work, who see their individual rights curtailed in the country of destination, in addition to receiving less than 20% of the salary agreed for them while the rest goes to the Cuban State.
Occhiuto had based his agreement in August on the fact that the different calls made to cover the vacancies of doctors would be deserted. “There are not enough doctors in our hospitals. There are not enough doctors in Italy. All the regions are doing their best to recruit them, and they are not succeeding. What to do? Close the hospitals? Close the emergency services?” the.
The Cuban government, despite the shortage of health personnel, does not seem willing to take any measures to retain those it has trained
The Cuban government, despite the shortage of health personnel, does not seem willing to take any measures to retain those it has trained. Last week, this newspaper published that the medical schools are also suffering from the progressive emptying that the country is experiencing.
The most serious case occurred in Artemisa, where more than 20 medical students from the same course resigned en masse. The students of this career, formerly the most prestigious and among the best paid in the country, see with alarm how every day it is more difficult to have the adequate means or the medicines to treat patients. In addition, their standard of living has plummeted, as many self-employed workers can earn much more money than they do, who are also working longer and longer shifts due to lack of staff. To all this is added the fact that, for carrying out a strategic task for the State, they are prohibited from leaving the country.
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