While Cubans bet that an effective vaccine will be discovered to immunize people against Covid-19 or at least prevent its spread, they have accepted with skepticism the medical authorities’ announcements, assuring that the use of the vaccines would be allowed in March. on the island.
“There is no drug in pharmacies to combat scabies and they want to stuff us with the story that they are going to produce 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccines,” said Ezequiel Varona Díaz, a Centro Habana resident and father of three minors. severely infected with scabies “for three months.
The doctors at the guard house, in any hospital, tell you plainly, ‘There are no medicines, solve it by boiling your clothes every day and bathing in hot water twice. “We’ve been trying for three months with our three children, but already We can’t keep cooking clothes and sheets every day because water comes into this church every other day,” argued Varona Díaz, who also confirmed in her people’s council. , Colón, “The outbreak is not coronavirus, but scabies. “
In an advertising video from TeleSur, the director of the Finlay Institute in Havana, Vicente Pérez, explained that Cuba had four advanced vaccines: Soberana 01 and 02, Abdala and Mambisa.
“Cuba is the only developing country with vaccines against Covid in human tests. Their use on the island could be approved in March and the goal is to vaccinate all Cubans by 2021,” he said.
The official said Cuba is moving forward and has already offered these vaccines to Vietnam, Iran, Venezuela and India. “They will even be offered to foreign tourists visiting the island. Tourists will have the option, if they wish, to get vaccinated in Cuba as well,” he said.
Dr. Rafael López, a resident of Plaza, recalled that as a contagious subcutaneous disease, scabies spreads quickly through physical contact in homes, educational institutions and retirement homes, but with the right medications, it gets over in days or, most, in two weeks.
“To treat scabies, the first thing to do is kill the mites and their larvae with drugs that have to be applied from the neck down and work for eight hours. It is also possible to kill the mites with oral medications. but well now there is neither neither one nor the other alternative In the area where I work, in Diez de Octubre, scabies is literally pandemic, and the only recommendation is to cook and bathe clothes with hot water every day. macaw leaves, “advised López.
The clerk of a pharmacy in the municipality of Cerro assured her that for about a year she had hardly received any medicines to treat scabies, such as lindan and benzyl benzoate.
Permethrin is what comes in every now and then. But it doesn’t last for 24 hours because scabies is the real pandemic. I don’t know of any neighbor at Casino Deportivo who doesn’t have scabies. People are turning to self-medicate with ointments. For skin conditions like clovetasol and triamcinolone, but the doctors themselves warn you that neither is effective in curing scabies, ”said this clerk.
The serious economic crisis that the country is going through is reflected every day in the impoverishment of medical care, primary health services and in the constructive state of the hospitals, outpatient clinics and medical offices themselves, where the professionals do not even have instruments, optimal materials and supplies, or in stock, to offer their services with the quality that, according to the rhetoric of the island regime, distinguishes Cuba internationally.
Aurora Oliva’s mother, diagnosed with advanced stage Alzheimer’s disease, suffered bedsores because the old woman can barely take care of herself to meet her physiological needs.
“I went to the Family Clinic, where the health personnel explained to me that there was no material available to cure bedsores, nor in the pharmacies. That such material must be requested by a medical certificate from the outpatient clinic, where it will be assigned later. at the clinic, ”says Oliva, a math graduate and a neighbor from Playa.
A week later, the nurse left me some nitrofurasona at home [pomada antibiótica] that it was all there was, and the warning that she had to learn to heal them because she couldn’t do it daily due to her workload. But no sterile gloves, gauze pads, cotton buds, iodine, chromium mercide, alcohol, which are needed to heal bedsores. In the midst of all this, the whole area is infected with scabies, including my partner who has not been able to dissolve it, not even in Revolico, sulfur or ozone soap, ”added Oliva.
Los Sitio, one of the Havana neighborhoods with the highest population density, has been in an isolation phase since February 12 last year, when it was declared the epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic in Havana.
“In addition to the coronavirus, here in Los Sitio is the epicenter of scabies. That people feel sorry for shouting out loud is another, but the scabies outbreak is very serious,” confirmed a doctor while performing the PCR in four families. in one of the dozens of districts of this Volksraad.
“ I agree that it is really inadmissible to speak of production of 100 million doses of any vaccine, when it cannot produce even as basic drugs as are needed to combat the scabies outbreak which currently affects not only Havana, but also more than half of the provinces, ’emphasizes this doctor, who fears that people’s self-medicating to get rid of scabies will cause irreparable damage to the skin.
“A nurse’s daughter of ours resorted to the ‘remover’ used for horses, while a friend of mine uses liquid with her grandchildren to kill ticks in dogs. I’ve seen other cases resorting to the mixture of vinegar with baking soda or petroleum jelly used for damaged hair. All these inventions are very harmful and can cause the acceleration of skin cancer, one of the most common in the country, ”this doctor concluded.