Cuban doctor dies due to lack of medical supplies in Cienfuegos hospital

The Cuban doctor Roberto Edelso Ramírez passed away in the province of Cienfuegos due to the lack of medical supplies for patients in coronary care.

The son of the physician, Edgar Ramírez Turiño, reported on Facebook that the lack of essential medical supplies and equipment, as well as the apparent lack of response from the staff, led to the fatal outcome at the Gustavo Aldereguía Lima Hospital and is asking for a response from the authorities.

The doctor, a graduate physician with a gold medal and recognized in Venezuela for his outstanding work in that country for eight years, was working in area III (Red Cross) of Cienfuegos.

He had suffered a heart attack five years ago, which occurred again two weeks ago, so he was hospitalized and discharged on July 29. However, his health deteriorated again on July 31, and he had to be admitted to the cardiology intensive care unit, his son reported.

"They told us that a coronagraphy needed to be done at the cardiocenter in Santa Clara, but there was no availability of an intensive care ambulance"; however, the doctors reassured the family by saying that "the medication they were administering through the IV was miraculous, that no one died from that."

But the patient spent the night in the dark, and at 5:40 am, when they turned on the light in the room, which can never be turned off in that place, his hand was swollen because the trocar used to administer the medication had come out of the vein, and there was none to replace it.

"I call the nurse, and she realizes that the trocar has come out. 'Hmm,' says the nurse, 'and here there's nothing.' My father was well oriented, and as a specialist he tells me, 'be careful from now on with the heart rate because the medication is starting to stop entering.' She hangs the needle with the IV on its stand and begins the countdown of the patient’s remaining time," Ramírez Turiño recounts.

Finally, the family had to find a trocar on their own, but while attempting to place it on the patient, it broke due to handling.

"I began to call friends, and a little backpack appeared. The heart rate was already in a light blue frame showing 126, after having spent the night between 88 and 94. In all this desperation, my father told me that he was starting to panic, to call the on-call cardiologist again," recounts the victim's family member.

He claims it was a terrible moment. "While they were searching for the doctor, my dad asked the nurse to quickly inject him with furosemide, to which the nurse responded, 'Hey, you’re a doctor; you know perfectly well that there’s nothing here.'"

At that moment, the father asked the son to give him "oxygen because I'm panicking and my lungs are going to fill up with fluid."

When she told the nurse this, she replied that "there isn't a fork for the oxygen here either."

"When he heard that, he told me to break a small empty saline bag and put it directly in. That's what the nurse did while I desperately fanned air at full speed with my handkerchief already filled with tears. At that moment, the cardiologist arrived, and upon seeing the situation, she went for the defibrillator. My dad asked to open a syringe to remove the needle and administer the medication that was in the saline. The cardiologist urgently requested furosemide from the nurse, who said there was none, but thought there might be one in her bag. Bingo, indeed, there was one in the bag," the story continues.

"In a state of panic and seeing that he couldn't fulfill any of his requests at the precise moment the episode occurred, (my father) looked at me intently and said his last words: 'Oh son, I'm going to die.' His forehead fell onto my chest, and I lost consciousness. When I managed to recover, I found myself lying on a sofa with a fixed fan, and my brother was running all over the living room and the hospital," details the post.

Finally, they transferred the patient to the multipurpose intensive care unit, where he passed away half an hour later.

The family not only demands a response from the authorities but also actions to prevent avoidable deaths from continuing to occur in Cuba, whereReports of shortages of supplies in hospitals are on the rise.I'm sorry, but there is no text provided for translation. Please provide the text you would like me to translate.

"I am not blaming a bricklayer if he made a mistake and placed a crooked brick, which can be hit with a hammer, knocked down, and replaced with a new one; I am trying to seek justice for someone defenseless who was ill and expected to have his needs met according to what he had studied and practiced throughout his medical career," emphasized the son.

"I am going to publish this narrative to see if by sharing it I can reach those to whom I initially dedicate it, and justice is served. I am not interested in who will pay because my father paid the highest cost without having any responsibility; with his life. We demand as a family that they confirm whether the hospital was truly as lacking in supplies, devoid of basic materials in a coronary intensive care unit. Will they say again that our main strength is health, and that it is written in golden letters?" he questioned.