Sancti Spíritus/“There is no water,” warns a sign in the cafeteria of the Camilo Cienfuegos Provincial Hospital in Sancti Spíritus. The paper, which hangs sideways on a blackboard, adds that only “take-away products” are sold and its presence is only a small sample of what is experienced inside the medical center. Several of the operating rooms remain closed, specialized consultations are limited and the bathrooms are overflowing with excrement.
“You can’t even clean the floor because water hasn’t gotten in for days,” he tells 14ymedio an employee who works in the Guard Corps area. “This has affected everything, from the emergency services to the laboratory where the analyzes are done and the hemodialysis room, which is one of the rooms that has the most problems right now because there are patients in a very delicate state.” The worker considers that in these conditions “the hospital becomes a high-risk place for the sick.”
/ 14ymedio
In the Guard Corps, the smells coming from the bathrooms fill the waiting room, the doctors and nurses seem to have gotten used to the plague after days in which it has been present, but the patients who have just arrived feel it like a pain in the face. the face “I came with my husband who is having an asthma attack and as soon as we entered we were shocked. How can a health center be like this?” After waiting for half an hour, the couple decided to return home. “We’ll see how we resolve it, but this is unbearable.”
The hospital, which was recently the target of criticism for the lack of health personnel at night, has been defended in the official press as a place that “despite the energy contingency” works 24 hours a day and provides excellent service. Last October a photo report published in Escambray It showed surgeons in an impeccable room performing a complex operation, maintenance technicians analyzing samples, and a nephrology specialist calibrating modern dialysis equipment. If these images were repeated now, they would not be able to capture the main protagonist of those rooms and consultations: the stench that the lack of water has spread everywhere.
