Cockroaches and bedbugs have invaded the wards of the Doctor Ángel Arturo Aballí Maternal and Child Hospital in Havana, according to reports from relatives of patients admitted to the medical facility.
A report published this Tuesday by the news portal Cubanet revealed the massive presence of both pests in the wards of the hospital located in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, which poses a significant risk of disease transmission.
Parents of hospitalized children documented in a video the invasion of both pests in rooms 3 and 4, located on the third floor of "Aballí."
The images are alarming: cockroaches are crawling on the beds, the tables where food is placed, the bathroom, and the walls, where an increasing presence of bedbugs has also been detected.
The father of a two-year-old patient, whose identity was not revealed to avoid retaliation from the authorities, stated that the companions are “without sleep, watching that the cockroaches do not enter our children's ears, they move around as they please. They walk on the beds, over the children, they are everywhere and here, no one does anything to resolve this situation.”
To prevent insects from reaching the children, parents place white sheets around the edges of the beds, so they can spot and kill them.
“It's criminal, we spend whole nights without being able to sleep, killing little cockroaches, because they are the tiny ones, the ones they call German, which can kill a child if they get into their ear,” lamented the man, while condemning the attitude of the doctors who “ignore us when we bring up this situation”.
Another family member told Cubanet that there are bedbugs in the mattresses, primarily due to the lack of hygiene in the hospital, she claimed. “They come and clean the hallway, when they do, because there are times they don’t even do that. The little tables where we put the children’s food are not even looked at, and they aren’t even able to wipe the beds down when a patient is discharged,” the woman warned.
According to the complaints from the parents, an official from Hygiene and Epidemiology at the hospital attributed the issue to a lack of raw materials at Labiofam for producing pest control products.
A father reported that the official stated they have been unable to tackle the pests because the company responsible for producing biological and pharmaceutical products has not been able to manufacture the poison to eliminate the insects due to a lack of raw materials, and consequently, it has not been supplied to the hospital.
“Moreover, he told us that this was one of the hospitals with the least cockroaches and bedbugs. In others, there are even mice,” the father expressed indignantly.
The case of the "Aballí" hospital is not an isolated incident in the country. Reports of bedbug infestations and cockroaches have been frequent in recent years, highlighting the increasing unsanitary conditions in Cuban hospitals and the negligence of health authorities in addressing an epidemiological problem that jeopardizes the health and well-being of patients and the entire population.
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