Internists and doctors Ecatepec General Hospital, Mexico, denounces that since April last year, when the pandemic began, six medical students died while on duty and others 35 took COVID-19. They attribute it to poor working conditions inside the place
We recommend: UNAM withdraws the internal doctors from the Ecatepec hospital after the death of the student from COVID-19
“He was on guard duty, a patient arrives, he begins to remain unemployed. The patient spits blood and the blood falls on my brother’s face and it enters his eyes, because my brother had no other mask than his mask “, said Sharon López, the sister of the deceased doctor.
Jorge Alejandro López, university intern at the Iztacala School of Higher Education of UNAM, participated in this emergency on December 6 at the Ecatepec General Hospital. ANDOn January 4, he died right there because of COVID. His family says that in that month and still with symptoms, he had to report for work.
“He’s going back to the hospital because they asked him to teach him, even my sick brother already had purple lips, he went to his guards,” his sister said.
Sharon tells how Jorge received his last attention.
“I arrived at the hospital, he entered the accident area, his colleagues revived him for 40 minutes, without gloves, without syringes, without masks. At 5:40 in the afternoon we are told that my brother is already dead. So far no one was able to send in the perfect solution, which is not strange.
Poor working conditions cause the death of medical students from COVID at Ecatepec Hospital. PHOTO Television News
After Jorge’s death, Iztacala FES withdrew the team of internal doctors assigned to that hospital. However, relatives and colleagues point out that his death was due to alleged negligence on the part of his superiors, as well as irregularities such as lack of protective equipment.
“Despite all this pandemic, it is assumed that we could not have, first by a federal decree, in high-risk services, such as emergencies, triage and, of course, this has not been done. There are not even gloves in the emergency room, imagine that I tell you everything. Every two months I give you two face masks and one of the most common ones “, said Melissa Méndez, intern.
“Our curtain seems to be broken, it’s a vile plastic that protects us from COVID patients. Right now I was fired from Chemita because I complained that we do not have the conditions to work “, said a nurse.
Saturday, a nurse from the same hospital reported on social media that she had been fired, although proves he was infected.
“The intern who unfortunately died due to the conditions in which we work, experienced something very similar to what I experienced, they told me that I was fine and that I should not expect disabilities,” the nurse denounced.
Count that became infected while participating in the birth of a patient with COVID without proper protective equipment and that when he showed the first symptoms he was asked to continue working until he had no results.
“The care is worse than if we were patients, it’s because you can wait or you can bear, I got infected, I got my parents infected and right now my grandmother is sick,” said another nurse.
In an application form, trainees and doctors at the General Hospital in Ecatepec request protective equipment and are evaluated by trained personnel when presenting any symptoms of COVID.
“Only colleagues who enter the COVID area receive the appropriate equipment, we are practically out with a three-layer mask, so if they start asking, you start to bother. The fact that they tell us heroes is just a speech, an empty word, “said a doctor.
“If there are no doctors, they will treat them,” Dr. Melissa concluded.
With information from Víctor Valles-Mata and Fernando Guillén
KAH