MIAMI, United States. – Although the Minister of Public Health of Cuba, José Ángel Portal Miranda, denied this Thursday before the National Assembly of People’s Power that the island’s health system was collapsed due to dengue, the newspaper Gironfrom Matanzas, reported this Friday a contrary situation in the municipality of Colón.
“There is no collapse in services, beyond any specific organizational problem that we may have in some of our institutions,” Portal Miranda told the deputies this Thursday.
On the other hand, he accused the “enemies of the Revolution” of spreading the opinion matrix that the island’s health system is collapsed, an assumption that he described as “totally unreal.”
He also insisted that the current moment is not the worst with respect to the number of dengue patients, since the infestation rate is below other more critical periods, he said.
However, Girón’s report on the situation of the General Teaching Hospital Doctor Mario Muñoz Monroy, in Colón, denies the minister even without intending it.
The director of that care center, Yailen Pérez Rosales, said that although there were 253 beds for children and adults in the hospital, the dengue outbreak in recent weeks “jeopardized the care capabilities of the center, both logistically and for human resources”.
“In the month of June, 248 patients were admitted to Pediatrics and 311 to Medicine, for a total of 559. So far in July we have counted 315: 154 children and 161 adults,” specified the leader.
“We are in an overexertion, because we are few and we have a very rigorous work scheme; but children must be given the required attention. There are many, many cases”, he also told Giron Dr. Valenzuela Vera.
According to that medium, the hospital management had to order the fitting out of the theater where meetings and other activities are held in an improvised pediatric room, as well as the installation of beds in the corridors.
In the same way, it was necessary to create an annex room in a Health Polytechnic, with another 60 beds.
“Regarding medicines, we have had and still have a deficit of some, not only in the Mario Muñoz Monroy hospital, but in the province and in the country: chlorosodium, for example. Some expendable supplies are also missing. All these, as they have been entering the province, are given priority to this hospital. The antibiotic, orally or intravenously, is available for those who require it. As for rehydration salts, which are lacking at the national level, the hospital has adopted the strategy of making its own,” Pérez Rosales specified.
The fear of a dengue epidemic has spread throughout the country, where more and more news about positive cases and even deaths caused by the disease are emerging.
This Wednesday, it was learned that a 16-year-old adolescent had died at the Paquito González Cueto Pediatric Hospital, in Cienfuegos, according to the institution itself in a statement published by Perlavisión on its website. Facebook social network.
The young Claudio Moisés Vera Gallart had arrived at the health center last week (July 14 at 8:35 pm), according to the official document, with “a diagnostic impression of nonspecific febrile syndrome.”
Last week, just the day Claudio Moisés entered, a report from the official channel pearlvision assured that the Paquito González Cueto Pediatric Hospital had reported a considerable increase in “non-specific febrile syndromes”, which had forced a redesign of the patient care strategy.
According to Perlavisión, in those days 200 people arrived at the emergency room each day, so the management of the health center decided to allocate two rooms for patients with dengue warning signs.
On Wednesday, July 13, a seven-year-old girl, Paola Patricia Rodríguez, died in the same institution after several days admitted with hemorrhagic dengue.
This week, another girl, Arlin Sailet Acuna Espinosasecond grader, died in Santiago de Cuba also from hemorrhagic dengue.
At the beginning of July, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) reported that the island was on alert by dengue, and that in this 2022 the highest number of outbreaks in the last 15 years had been registered.
According to a note from the state Cuban News Agency (ACN), the alert was issued especially in the provinces of Havana, Camagüey, Las Tunas and Holguín.
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