Cienfuegos, Aug 25 (ANC) Since March 2020, future health professionals have been engaged in the fight against COVID-19 in the province of Cienfuegos, taking part in community screenings, working in isolation centers and helping with the vaccination process with Abdala, among other tasks.
One of them is second-year medical student Flavia Elena Leyva Zequeira, who joined the screenings since the first days of this effort to tackle the pandemic. She told ACN that although there were not as many positive cases as there are now, many people were isolated, an exhausting task because she served a large population.
“It was a pleasant one, though, because people were very grateful for our concern, and the mission was useful inasmuch as I learned about constancy in the job and about the importance of getting through to the patients. Now I feel more prepared, and I only think about how to use what I know to help more,” she said.
“While in the hospital, I met some children and their mothers who got infected following an outbreak in a daycare center. When they arrived, the little ones started to cry, scared of the hazmat suits, but one of my colleagues started to dance to cheer them up and the kids burst out laughing. Their mothers were grateful, since they were very nervous too,” Leyva Zequeira recalled.
When the vaccine Abdala was first administered in the city of Cienfuegos, she and other fellow students volunteered again to do whatever was needed. She was put in charge of providing information about the vaccine, taking the patients’ blood pressure and observing them in the following hour. “It made me realize that all tasks are equally important,” she pointed out. “We have worked hard so far, and what remains to be done will probably be even harder, but we are still willing to help.”
After the appearance of the first SARS CoV-2 cases in this province, the local medical students have joined different important tasks that no doubt will contribute to their integral formation and reveal the sense of duty, sensitivity and humanism that characterize the health personnel qualified in Cuba.
