“Imagine that your child was never born”: Mother denounces negligence and indolence in Holguín

SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- A young Cuban mother, resident in Holguin, She denounced the medical negligence that led to the death of her son, who was barely 20 days old.

Arlety González González, from the Negrito neighborhood, in the Holguin municipality of Antilla, told CubaNet the anguish experienced at the beginning of this year since her baby became ill until the events that caused the death of the newborn.

In an interview with this newspaper, Gonzalez explained that the tragic events began on January 24, when the baby became ill. The young mother took the child to the hospital at 6:00 a.m., where a nurse took him and took him away.

González said she didn’t hear from the baby again until 12 hours later, when she saw an ambulance arrive. “I just saw the doctors coming in and out and none of them said anything to me.”

“The ambulance arrived and they didn’t want me to go with the child because the child was in bad shape and they didn’t want me to go with him. They gave him a rosefin and he had an adverse reaction. I found out about that in Holguín. When we got there, they told me,” he said.

Reaction to antibiotic

According to the doctors, when the antibiotics were administered, the baby suffered a cardiac arrest and began to have convulsions. “The nurse who was in the ambulance didn’t want me to ride with her because she said I couldn’t go. But anyway, I fought with her and got into the ambulance.”

When she arrived at the hospital in the provincial capital, she was ordered to sit down on a chair. It was already after 10:00 pm. “They didn’t want to tell me anything. I went and asked and they told me to sit down, to be calm. They didn’t tell me anything, not even how the child was or anything. Until I went and spent time there with a nurse that there was”.

It was then that the medical staff told her that if she wanted to see her son alive, she should go into the ward. “And I went in, but he stayed like that for three days. Because the rosefin they gave him was in vain, he had an adverse reaction and contracted a bacteria. As a result of that, he contracted a bacteria,” she explained.

On the last day of the child’s life, he suffered six or seven consecutive cardiac arrests. That day, January 26, he died.

“Never existed”

“He died at 3:20 in the morning and at 12 noon my child was still in the living room because there was no stretcher-bearer to take him down to the morgue.”

At that moment, and in the midst of her pain, the young woman entered, picked up her little boy and took him to the morgue. “When we got there, they didn’t want to give him to me so I could have him laid to rest at home. Because he was a baby and didn’t have a card, the doctor told me to accept that he didn’t exist. That he had never existed. He told me, ‘Mom, accept the idea that your child was not born.’”

The authorities told him that he would stay there and he did. would cremateso she asked her mother for a sheet, wrapped him up and took him home.

“The director of the pediatric hospital in Holguín called the police because I was bringing the dead child here (to the house). Because that child was mine, I was not going to leave him there. And all the doctors and nurses came to fight with me because I could not bring the child. They said that I could not carry him because he would contaminate me,” she said.

In her testimony she also said that the red berets came to take the child away from her, something she prevented. She remained with the baby until the hearse arrived.

“I stayed there and told them that they had to give me my child because that was my baby. Because even if he was dead, that was my son. He was 20 days old.” They never offered her any explanations about the causes that led to the child’s death.

Medical negligence in Cuba has left a trail of deaths in the country. Last year, a 10-month-old baby died in a hospital in the municipality of Alquízar, Artemisa province, after waiting more than five hours for an ambulance.

The little girl, who lived with her parents in the town of Dagame, arrived at the Ciro Redondo Teaching Hospital with a fever in the morning and difficulty breathing. Although she had a history of good health, as there was no ambulance available, the little girl died in the emergency room after waiting four or five hours to be transferred.