Eine erschreckende Geschichte aus dem Greenscreen. Lurker ist übrigens keinesfalls ein Miami-Kubaner, ausserdem leitet er ein Hilfsprojekt für Kuba.

http://www.goliathboards.com/users5/gree...&num=1104058561

PS: Mir ist eine ähnliche Geschichte passiert. Auch ich musste einen Kubaner mit mitgebrachten Medikamenten "behandeln" , der einen "Motorrad-Unfall" hatte.

A motorcylce accident

« on: December 26th, 2004, 9:56am »

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One of my Havana friends is an editor of a government publishing house, about 50 years old, also a prize winning photographer.

Two weeks ago she was in a motorcycle accident- she was driving, her niece was riding. They hit a spot of grease and the moto flipped over, and the exhaust tube landed on top of my friend, and burned her leg pretty badly, and she also banged up a rib, which two weeks later is still very painful. The niece was also banged up, but less severely.

My friend and her niece got back on the motorcycle, in pain and in shock, because they didn't know exactly what they should do. They rode over to the neighborhood clinic, where they were told that on that particular day there were no doctors or even nurses present. They were advised to go over to a larger hospital, but when they got there, they were told that the hospital is under reconstruction and they could not be seen for a few hours, minimum, and they were sent somewhere else.

The long and the short of it is that two weeks have gone by and they still have never seen a doctor. That first day my friend went to four different health centers, and could not be treated at any of them. They did manage to find a nurse who gave them some advice- what kind of antibiotic, how to treat the burn- no actual medicine because there wasn't any. They had to buy the medicine on the street. The nurse also told the woman that if she started to urinate blood, that would be a serious sign of internal bleeding, but otherwise, the rib wound would probably heal itself.

When I saw the woman a few days ago, she had an open wound about 2 inches by 4 inches on her thigh, covered with a white antibiotic cream that they had bought with borrowed dollars. There was a red margin, about an inch wide around the open wound. I was told that the red infected area had been shrinking, but the pain in the rib had not abated.

It turns out that they live near a surgeon frined of mine so I called the surgeon and asked if he could stop in and visit. My surgeon friend is also an avid photographer, so I suggested that in addition to curing a patient who didn't have a doctor, they could talk photography.

As often happens in Cuba, proper medical treatment depends on who you know. It turns out that she knows me, and I know a surgeon, so maybe she will get good attention.

All this happened in Miramar, Havana. You can imagine the level of medical treatment available in the rest of the country. In Santiago de Cuba, I'm told there is only one optometrist still open for business- the others have been sent to Venezuela. If you need a new prescription, I'm told you have to pay a little money, or you have to wait. The Santiagueros seem to be more pissed off about all the doctors going to Venezuela- maybe because more orientales are being shipped away, or maybe because some of my Santiaguero friends don't like the system very much to begin with.