“It’s been a long time since I stopped believing in what the Government says,” confesses Alfredo, a 29-year-old asthmatic man living in the Plaza municipality. Tired of going around in search of salbutamol, the most prescribed drug in Cuba for patients like him, and receiving excuses at the pharmacy, he went to the Ministry of Public Health where, after insisting on calling day and night, he couldn’t get any worse. answer.
“Production is deficient because we lack aluminum. Ask in your networks that the imperialists lift the blockade, so that we can have drugs and many other things. In the meantime, I recommend that you take a few walks along the Malecón so that the fresh air relieves the shortness of breath, “snapped the official who answered the call.
“It is your fault that you are inept,” Alfredo answered angrily, who received in response: “You don’t have the balls to stand in the Plaza de la Revolución and say all that.”
“It is your fault that you are inept,” Alfredo answered angrily, who received in response: “You don’t have the balls to stand in the Plaza de la Revolución and say all that”
The defiant attitude was all that the young man found when demanding answers to so many delays in the distribution of the medicine. “I belong to the population at risk of covid-19, because in addition to being asthmatic I have pulmonary emphysema. In the most serious moments of the pandemic I had to expose myself and go to polyclinics and hospitals because there was no way to find the spray,” he says .
The drug, which belongs to the group of bronchodilators, is essential for patients suffering from lung and respiratory diseases and who in recent months have been turned to ask for help from relatives, acquaintances and also on the networks.
“Why hasn’t salbutamol been in for more than two months? Do they want to kill all the asthmatics in the country?” Another asthmatic from Havana, Lidia, asked this week the employee of the pharmacy where she has to buy. The response, in his case, was very different from that received by Alfredo. “Don’t ask me, go to the Council of State that they are responsible,” said the worker.
At the end of August, Rita María García Almaguer, Director of Operations and Technology of BioCubaFarma, assured the official press that, “despite the difficult national and international context that had caused the production deficit and therefore the availability of drugs, the The trend at that time was towards full recovery. ” However, almost three months later the situation is far from being resolved.
The first cold front of the current season, which aggravates respiratory problems, has coincided with a new shortage of the product. “The most notable thing about the crisis we are experiencing is that salbutamol is lacking. Even in the hardest time of the 90’s it was not lacking for so long. However, for a couple of years, it is news when it enters the pharmacy “, he tells 14ymedio Juan Carlos, asthmatic for 40 years.
“The salbutamol that I have now I exchanged for two boxes of Criollos cigarettes from the winery,” says Aleida, a neighbor of the Cerro municipality. “You almost always find a charitable soul who doesn’t use it as much and donates it to you,” he says with relief. “Everything is so difficult and people are so needy, that exchanges and sales are increasing.” In groups of buying and selling of WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram many advertisements of barters of this type are seen, mainly of food and medicine.
But not only asthmatics are in check with the absence of the drug. The eight-year-old son of José Alberto Silva, a resident of the Puentes Grandes neighborhood in Havana, recovered from COVID-19 after becoming infected last May. “He was admitted but a serious virus did not pass, the worst came later,” the father explains to this newspaper. “Now with the change of weather, the air began to lack.”
“The salbutamol that I have now I exchanged for two boxes of Criollos cigarettes from the winery,” says Aleida, a neighbor of the municipality of Cerro
The boy, who had never been diagnosed with asthma, went to the doctor for symptoms that, according to the doctor, could be alleviated with a Salbutamol spray. “Not even in the spiritual centers have we found it and we are going to have to end up on the black market,” says Silva.
“The minimum that a spray costs is 200 pesos, but I have already seen people who are selling them for 350”, laments the father. “My family has no contacts of any kind to sort out this type of medicine because no one in my house has suffered from asthma before, this has surprised us at a bad time and without being prepared. “
The lack of salbutamol in other parts of the country is more desperate. Reports reached the newsroom from Matanzas, Cienfuegos and Camagüey show that in other provinces the shortage has been constant. “I need salbutamol, I pay whatever price”, “An asthma device please, even if it’s half empty, help!” medical power? “, are some of the signs that patients and their families send daily.
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