IN TWO MONTHS

 

Cuban doctors saved more than 1,000 lives in Guatemala

 

• Members in the Henry Reeve International Contingent assisted more than 400,000 patients 

 

BY LILLIAM RIERA —Granma International staff writer—

 

• The 600 Cuban doctors of the Henry Reeve International Contingent, who traveled in early October to Guatemala saved 1,360 lives and assisted 442,681 individuals affected by hurricane Stan, in just two months.

 

Considered the most destructive in the history of this Central American nation, Stan caused an official total of 670 deaths, 844 disappeared, more than 280,200 others affected, 32,807 homes destroyed or damaged and the loss of nearly $400 million in agriculture.

 

This information was offered by Dr. Daniel Posada, second in command of this international contingent, upon the return to Havana of the last group of Cuban physicians.

 

Esteban Lazo Hernández, José Ramón Machado Ventura, Minister of Public Health (MINSAP) José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, and Pedro Sáez Montejo, all members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba, gathered at the airport terminal to great the doctors and to deliver regards from President Fidel Castro.

 

MAYORS AND RESIDENTS RECOGNIZE THE WORK OF THE PARTICIPANTS

 

Balaguer received several letters sent to Fidel by mayors and Guatemalan citizens, giving thanks for the noble labor of the Cuban aid personnel. 

 

Beginning on October 8th, 600 doctors and 87 technicians were gradually sent from Cuba to mitigate the effects of Stan.

 

The 600 doctors worked along side the other 233 permanent physicians who have been employed by Guatemala since hurricane Mitch 1998.

 

The International Contingent of Specialized Doctors in Situations of Disaster and Grave Epidemics, that is named after Henry Reeve (a U.S. citizen who fought for Cuban independence in the 19th century), was created this past September 19th during the national graduation ceremony of 1,905 doctors attended in Havana by Fidel.

 

The Henry Reeve brigade was first formed in response to the hurricane Katrina disaster in the U.S., when Cuba offered that country the assistance of more than 1,500 doctors to attend to the victims, which was ultimately rejected by the Bush government.

Currently the contingent is made up of the above mentioned physicians plus 200 volunteers from the 2004-2005 medical school graduation; 200 from the year before; and 600 sixth-year and 800 fifth-year medical students of the 2005-2006 school year. President Fidel Castro explained that Latin American, Caribbean, and North American students of the Latin American School of Medicine could be added.     

 

MEDICAL CARE TO MORE THAN 2 MILLION RESIDENTS

 

In Guatemala, the 600 Cuban brigade members offered medical care to  2,374,343 residents of 69 municipalities in 11 of the most affected departments, including Sololá, Suchitepéquez, Chimaltenango and Retalhuleu, located in the south. Stan caused severe damage in 15 departments of the country.

The returnees have many stories. For Dr. Nidia Márquez Morales, heading the first group that arrived; principally made up of specialists in General Medicine, Orthopedics, Traumatology, Gynecology, Anesthesiology and Epidemiology; worse than the devastation brought on by hurricanes in that nation and all of Central America, is the damage caused by the hurricane of neoliberalism.

 

IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE DUE TO LACK OF EARLY ATTENTION

 

Márquez recalled the pain that the doctors felt upon seeing how many children in that country suffer irreversible conditions caused by lack of early attention to illnesses.

 

Others, such as Karen Travieso, 23 and member of the second group, spoke about the difficult working conditions and the confrontation of illnesses that are exclusively linked to poverty: malaria and tetanus.

 

Recent graduate Dayana González, who returned in the third group and worked in a rural zone called El Tablón, explained to PL that respiratory infections, intestinal parasites, malnutrition, low body weight, and skin infections due to poor personal hygiene were the most frequent reasons for medical consultations.   

 

November 20th GI informed that in just one month this brigade had already saved 1,167 Guatemalan lives.

THE MAJORITY OF THOSE SAVED WERE UNDER 15 YEARS OLD

The majority of the lives saved —according to PL— was of children under 15 years old, but all ages of patients showed high levels of respiratory infections, diarrheic and skin illnesses, as well as some cases of dengue.

The memories of the physicians, whose humanitarian, selfless and volunteer mission is to save lives in any corner of the world, are full of pain, love, and solidarity.

In the Chactelá health center, for example, Dr, Yennys Medina Hernández, of Havana, told a Juventud Rebelde reporter that people there go up to eight days without eating. When the children stop breast feeding, because the mother has stopped producing milk, they are given chamomile tea and pazote tea (herbal tea.) That’s it. There are 18-month-olds who have never eaten an egg or a bite of meat. The malnutrition is severe, she said.

THE FIELD HAS BEAT THEM DOWN FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS

“They told me that ‘we come to the fields with nothing to eat’”, said Medina adding: “but when faced with a the child of four years, who doesn’t walk, who doesn’t crawl, and must be carried in the arms as if it were only 3 months old, I said to myself that the field has been beating these people down every morning for hundreds of years. Stan was only one more blow.”

Dr. Niurka Fleites Santana, of Cienfuegos, assured that the misery in Guatemala is comparable with what she saw in Zimbabwe, where she completed an internationalist mission. These experiences have convinced her that “hunger is not a result of the emergency or of three days.”

According to her, the most frequent reasons for medical consultations in the villages were heart, stomach and leg pains.

“In the stomach because they barely eat, and ’only corn and beans’, they would say; in the legs, of which most women complained, is because they work in the field all day with a baby carried on their backs, and the heart pain must be from the pain in their souls. I imagine that they cannot continue on with such poverty.”•

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