Relatives of 17-year-old Héctor Eduardo Tamayo Burgos are asking for clarification of the teenager’s medical diagnosis, who is in critical condition in a hospital in Santiago de Cuba.
Those close to the young man say that he has been admitted to the “La Colonia” Children’s Hospital in Santiago de Cuba for more than a week, and doctors have not yet identified the cause of his critical condition.
Initially, Tamayo Burgos was admitted to a Miscellaneous room due to a lack of intensive care beds. For three days, the young man has been in the Intensive Care Unit, where he remains in a vegetative state, with oxygen and other life support, a relative explained to independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada.
His cousin, Yurina Otero Tamayo, commented that “first they had him in a Miscellaneous room because in therapy there was no bed. Now he doesn’t speak and they have him on oxygen and everything, he is like in a vegetative state and the saddest thing is that the doctors They don’t give a diagnosis.”
Hector Eduardo, an 11th grade student, lives in the Luis Dagness neighborhood in Altamira with his father, Eduardo Tamayo Rodriguez, while his mother is in confinement.
“We are desperate, they just say that he is critical. What we want and demand is that they give us a diagnosis so that he can be treated and he will not suffer anymore,” his cousin added.
The province of Santiago de Cuba currently faces a complex epidemiological situation with the confirmation of the circulation of four viruses: dengue, influenza, oropouche and SARS-CoV-2, the latter causing COVID-19, according to official sources on Wednesday.
Aris Batalla, representative of the Red Cross in Santiago de Cuba, warned on Facebook that the presence of these viruses puts the population at risk, which must take extreme preventive measures amid an extreme shortage of medications such as painkillers and antipyretics.
In turn, the national director of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), Francisco Duranacknowledged that the country does not have fuel to spray against mosquitoes, amid a growing presence of the oropouche virus in Cuba.
In this context, the day before it emerged that the Saturnino Lora provincial hospital in Santiago de Cuba is collapsed, without beds or resourcesto meet the growing number of patients.
Journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada published on his Facebook page images and the testimony of a person according to whom a family member arrived at the medical center with shortness of breath, and there were no oxygen bottles, they were reserved for serious cases.
She also said that the observation room was packed, full of flies and without beds or air conditioning, despite the Oropouche fever and dengue pandemic affecting that area.
