Camagüey/Visiting my homeland, I had the opportunity to listen to a conversation where a lady who spent a whole day of a patient’s companion gave her impressions about the Amalia Simoni hospital (the official name is longer), in the city of Camagüey.
I seemed to be hearing the Nobel Prize for Russian Literature Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his brief novel entitled One day in the life of Iván Denísovichwhere he describes the conditions of the prisoners in the Stalinist work fields, but using the appeal to say “what miraculously did not happen that day”
Carolina, the optimistic narrator of this experience as a companion of her mother -in -law, admitted to that installation, began by saying that Amalia (the Camagüeanos call it) was undoubtedly the best hospital in the province. “Here the bathrooms are clean,” although he added: “Of course, the cups of the toilets are stained, but in no case the shit overflows.”
Giving them to know the intimacies of the hospital, he said, (I think speculating): “Here there is no labor shortage, because as there is a penalty room (for sick prisoners), the Ministry of Interior sends to work here common prisoners, who are not murderers or rapists, but people who have committed a minor crime.” To emphasize the effort of these criminals, he said: “Truth that they barely have what to clean, but they work hard, because they win a pass, and sometimes the family sends them a blanket to mop or some friegasuelos so that they can stand out.”
This hospital began to be built in 1957 with a three million pesos budget of the then health ministry
This hospital began to be built in 1957 with a three million pesos budget of the then Ministry of Health, but was inaugurated by Fidel Castro himself as an antituberculous hospital on November 27, 1959. In the official history it is specified that “during his stay in the hospital the commander Fidel Castro had lunch in the dining room and slept a few hours that night in the current office of the direction of the top of the floor.”
To underline the humanitarian character of the amalia nurses, Carolina sets as an example the situation of Marcelino, an elderly man without family, admitted here by a fracture that prevents him from walking. “The old man, who is half crazy, nurses bathe him every day and to respect his privacy they put some parabanes so that no one sees it in leathers.” Carolina seems extraordinary to Carolina, but the best thing is that “as he has no companion, here they have given him some clothes and even flip flops and take care of him so much that they have not stolen anything.”
The Amalia stopped taking care of Tuberculosis for having practically extinguished that disease, however now resurfaces strongly On the island. Since 1971, the center has had several changes until today, identified as a surgical clinical hospital with a physiotherapy room and a natural and traditional medicine service. UCI, UCIM and anesthetic recovery rooms are added. It currently has a pneumology and tisiology service, Provincial Service of Penados, Provincial Department of Legal Medicine and provides services to a surrounding Hospital of Physical and Mental Prevented.
In the Orthopedics room, where Carolina takes care of her mother -in
In the Orthopedics room, where Carolina takes care of their mother -in -law, all patients have a companion relative that is changed in shifts; A few touches the morning, others the day. “My mother -in -law was prescribed an antibiotic at night and the time she did not appear medicine, but so that you see how well worked there, the head of the nurses brought the antibiotic from her house and everything was resolved.”
Old Marcelino feels that he is in a five -star hotel, says Carolina. “Since no one can eat the food that is distributed there and everyone brings it from their home, Marcelino appears with what others reject, for me who has gained weight,” concludes the woman.
Carolina does not intend to suggest with subtleties what Sarcastic Solzhenitsyn would have told of Amalia Simoni. No, it was that “advanced” Russian who anticipated Carolina’s revolutionary optimism.
