Two medical sources confirm to 14ymedio that they have received this instruction for their diagnoses
14ymedio, Miguel García, Holguín, 2 August 2024 — After two weeks of barely being able to get out of bed and an early morning receiving hydration serum in the Vladimir Ilich Lenin General University Hospital in Holguín, Isabel, 64, seems to have gotten rid of dengue, though all her medical papers indicate that she had “acute fever syndrome,” the euphemism imposed by Public Health to avoid leaving a record of the current incidence of the virus on the Island.
“My son-in-law is a doctor, and when he saw that I had bruising in the abdominal area, a high fever and an inflamed liver, he diagnosed me at home,” Isabel explains to 14ymedio. With the clinical diagnosis from a direct relative, she also followed the clinic’s recommendations: rest, a lot of liquid and stay under a mosquito net to avoid bites that would infect others.
“I didn’t go to the hospital the first few days because they were going to tell me the same thing my son-in-law had already told me. Everyone knows how deteriorated the hospitals are, and there are many people filling up the emergency rooms with symptoms like mine.” But, when she was already on her seventh day with a high fever, “I began to feel very weak and had a very swollen abdomen, so I decided to go.”
Isabel went to the Lenin hospital and found the entire emergency room “full of people with the same symptoms”
Isabel went to the Lenin hospital and found the entire emergency room “full of people with the same symptoms.” She waited for her turn despite the discomfort that prevented her from sitting or lying down. “My liver and spleen were so inflamed that I could only stand, because if I sat down it hurt a lot, but standing made me quite tired; these were very difficult hours.”
“The first thing they told me was that there were no reagents to test for