Just for Mummies

Just for Mummies / Rosa Maria Rodriguez
Posted on May 7, 2013

Alberto is a carpenter from Guanabo who had an operation on a growth on
his neck. He says the surgery was a little complicated and so he has to
put gauze with iodine and alcohol on the wound to prevent it becoming
infected.

A couple of days ago, logically following the hospital's instructions,
he went to the polyclinic in his coastal town — the one where he is
registered — which is on 5th between C and 496. At the emergency room
they said they couldn't see him because they had nothing to treat him
with. Worried, he tried to persuade the nurse who was there; he showed
her the cut under his ear and said it had to be cared for daily. He also
explained that the operation was deeper than the surgeon expected and
even reminded her of Hugo Chavez himself in an effort to convince her.

Due to his insistence, the paramedic took him to look in the glass case
where they keep the medicines, bandages and things used for these cases
and showed him that there was only one small roll of tape on one shelf.
The healthcare worker was concerned that if someone came in from a knife
fight or an accident, there wouldn't be anything available to treat the
wound.

Now, concerned with this logic the ailing carpenter must face the
inconvenience and stress of traveling the 16 miles every day between
Guanabo and Havana in the filthy, late and always packed urban transport
to be seen in the same hospital where the surgery was performed.

He knows that there are other clinics he could go to, but beyond the
propaganda statistics, the habitually overinflated success figures, and
the misleading baptism of being a "medical powerhouse," he is reminded
of the helplessness he felt in his neighborhood, and he imagine every
one of the "people's" clinics will have the same scarcities and lack of
hygiene and prefers "not to risk his neck" in those "empty slaughterhouses."

7 May 2013

http://translatingcuba.com/just-for-mummies-rosa-maria-rodriguez/