Havana/Technical problems in the main medicinal oxygen production plant in Cuba have forced to reduce product deliveries to chronic patients. Since last December it has been limited, in Havana, the distribution of cylinders only to “those who are prostrated with imminent danger to life,” he tells 14ymedio An employee of the Oxicuba SA industry, located in the Cotorro municipality.
With a heart failure in the advanced stage, Brenda Concepción has not received the oxygen that allows “sleeping.” Next to the 66 -year -old Habanera bed resident in La Lisa, an empty ball reminds him of every night that if the lack of air does not have the necessary gas that reaches his lungs and returns the color to his cheeks and the Calm to your chest.
“I can hardly paste an eye for the fear that the air begins to be missing when you are lying,” tells this newspaper the woman. “My daughter has tired of calling the phone to report when the patient needs the product, but it doesn’t work. So we have run out of oxygen and without information,” he explains. “The number you call is temporarily out of service,” replied a recording when this newspaper made numerous calls at different times.
“In my neighborhood we are several chronic patients in the same situation, nobody responds to us”
“In my neighborhood we are several chronic patients in the same situation, nobody responds to us, but a truck driver who brings the balls told us that there is only a bit of oxygen in existence and the patients who are prostrated are being prioritized and they cannot Survive without him, “he says. “But in my case it is not a luxury, I can spend three days without needing it but when I get a crisis I have to have because if I don’t cost my life,” laments the woman.
Concepción fears that a scenario similar to the one that was lived during the days of the Covid-19 pandemic. A breakdown in May 2021 The Cotorro plant, information that The regime hid For more than two months. After an avalanche of complaints of patients and family members, the authorities created a management center to follow up during the 24 hours a day to a situation that cataloged “exceptional” and of which subsequently the cost it had in lives was not published human
The factory worked again after four months of its paralysis and according to its general manager, José Manuel Gámez Álvarez, then began to produce “70,000 cubic meters of liquid oxygen daily, above the demand of the health system that is currently 40,000” . Subsequently, the official press announced the inauguration of Two small plants of medicinal oxygen, with Chinese technology, in the province of Holguín.
Now, the firm is going through new problems that impact not only health but also other sectors. Oxicuba is defined as a mixed company between the state -owned Cuban Company International Cuban SA and the German Greenbelt Holding SA its production includes oxygen, nitrogen, argon, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, pure gases and their mixtures (in a liquid and gas state). The recipients are hospitals, patients who need to have medicinal oxygen in their homes, but also the steel industries such as the close Antillana de Steel.
When the product is scarce, the technicians paralyze their work or make prices more expensive
A large network of private workshops for vehicle and refrigerators repairs also nourish the oxygen that comes from the plant for their spokesman’s work. When the product is scarce, the technicians paralyze their work or make prices more expensive, a phenomenon that in recent weeks has already been noticed in the streets of the island.
“All deliveries are affected: to the medical and industrial sector,” confirms an oxychubed employee who works in the loading and unloading area and prefers to maintain anonymity. “Hospitals are being prioritized, especially the product that goes to intensive therapy rooms, but all other distributions are at a very low level because we have serious technical problems,” he explains.
The schedule to solve these difficulties is even unknown to industry workers. “It may take months to recover production at the previous levels, but we do not know, because Oxxicub has many problems to access resources right now, things are not going well and that is why we are in this bump.”
For Antonio Quintana Bonachea, a patient with a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and resident in the Cotorro municipality, the situation takes dramatic dyes. “In my particular case, since the end of December I have not received it again. The only information offered to us is that there are difficulties with the plant.” Regarding the problems to communicate with the supplier, Quintana is blunt: “I think they leave the line to not have to continue giving explanations.”
Tired of calling to report its urgency and without receiving any response, it disbursed $ 150 for a ball full of medicinal oxygen
“The alternative routes that were applied during the crisis in the middle of the pandemic have not even been mentioned,” laments the man who remembers that during the toughest months of the pandemic on the island, when Oxicuba was damaged, the armed forces had to Emergency intervene to distribute in the capital oxygen cylinders brought from Santiago de Cuba by helicopter. Another emergency solution that had to be improvised was the importation of the concentrate to prepare the gas at low volume 24 hours a day and that could be used by up to three patients at the same time.
Before the fear of not being able to have that oxygen breath that takes it out of the crisis, Nereida, 81, and with an obstructive sleep apnea (AOS), has had to choose to buy a ball in the black market. The woman, neighbor of the Havana municipality of Rancho Boyeros, received her last official supply in the first half of December. “The changes of time and the evolution of my illness has made me fall into several crises, so my ball was exhausted,” he tells this newspaper.
Tired of calling to report its urgency and without receiving any response, it disbursed $ 150 for a ball full of medicinal oxygen, with pressure gauge and hose, which took him to his house. “To the current change there were more than 50,000 pesos, but my hand did not tremble because this depends on me to continue in this cast and I do not leave for the cast Boca up“, Ironiza.
A look at the classifieds published in several sites of sale show all kinds of options: empty or full balls; more deteriorated or with gleaming paint; with your pressure meter or without that device; with home service for the time of delivery or with the limitation of going to look for a distant municipality. “My grandmother died, I have half an oxygen ball, I am selling it at 30,000 pesos,” says a Facebook ad. Dozens of comments gather at the foot of the image of a green cylinder placed next to an empty bed.
