By Nubia Piqueras Grosso *
Panama (Prensa Latina) The talk these days of the pandemic that is gripping the world, my daughter recalled an episode of health that he lived here, where the medicine of the soul in front the money made the difference in his speedy recovery.
–
Struck by the images of horrific circulated by the social networks on the Covid-19, his mind returned to the days of August 2019 in a strong asthmatic bronchitis stole the air as the new coronavirus does today with millions of people on the planet suffer from this deadly respiratory disease.
After applying, without results, some home remedies, we turned to the doctor in search of relief. However, his surprise exceeded the imagination, and any history that he had been told.
In the middle of the puff of air from a nebulizer came to his weak lungs to improve breathing, an ‘experienced’ doctor spoke only of a treatment of $ 800 for weight loss, as if more important at this moment to improve your form to break hearts.
But the sad thing was that neither the consultation, that cost 60 dollars, or the treatment or injectable antibiotics of us $ 40 each, applied in a comfortable office in one of the private hospitals most luxurious of Panama, they were able to calm the discomfort that the strong cough caused him.
However, from a modest query in one of the public health centres of this capital city Irma de Lourdes Tzanetatos) came to light and relief.
And is that unlike your ‘experienced’ colleague panamanian, the doctor Reymar Alvarado applied humanistic philosophy of medicine learned in Cuba during his six years of study, in which the patient’s life is more important.
After a thorough physical examination, plaque and blood tests, routine procedures bypassed by the other doctor, whose name I prefer not to mention by ethics, the diagnosis of the young galen was accurate: asthmatic bronchitis.
A great comfort came over us, the same that one feels when one is treated by the cuban doctors, and immediately comments, experiences and comparisons began to flow during the enjoyable conversation, in which he recalled everything he learned on the island.
In Cuba, Reymar not only knew the scope of the preventive medicine, that does not spare resources and efforts to maintain a healthy population, but also the value of the medicine of the soul, a good doctor delivery in exchange for a simple acknowledgment like the one today will surely profess patients recovered from Covid-19.
To his memory also came the intense days of study and medical care in the clinics and community hospitals, where more than a few times stood up to the doctor to have the cubans as a part of the high educational level of its population.
Nor missed the words of gratitude to their teachers, and the Government of the largest of the Antilas, the same who often profess the 818 medical panamanian graduates in Cuba until 2018 as Tania Gonzalez, who is currently working in the caribbean province of Bocas del Toro.
‘Thanks to Cuba I am the professional that I want to be to give and contribute to my country and the world. Thanks to the Commander-in-Chief (Fidel Castro) that we dreamed of as an army of white robes spread throughout the world in every corner, providing what the world needs: health’, ” said this graduate of the Latin american School of Medicine in 2008.
During his six years of study, the young doctor knew what it is to be cuban, to live the cuban on an island locked and see the daily struggle, the love and the solidarity infinite, so since then, ‘I’m proud of that half of my heart is cuban’.
But gratitude is not only manifested by these physicians, but also by their parents as they did you know during a meeting of Solidarity with Cuba, a mother, a panamanian, whose son graduated from medicine in the caribbean nation.
‘I love Cuba, because it was the mother of all the revolutions that have occurred in our America; because it is an icon in the world in terms of solidarity, dignity and culture of peace; because you have shared what you have and not what you have left, and because my son studied there, and never asked what party his mother was or if comulgaba with socialism’, he said.
And he stressed: ‘During those seven years I did not know what my son ate, but what I did know was that I ate every day, and that I owe to the Government and people of Cuba, despite being a country blocked’.
For these and other reasons, that go beyond the money because they touch the soul, that is what maybe many cubans who miss their healthcare system when they are abroad and an episode like this, touch your door.
alb/npg
(*) Correspondent head of Prensa Latina in Panama
– .
