Patients infected with COVID-19 face countless problems at the University Hospital in Maracaibo. Resident physicians and nurses have taken on the responsibility of keeping the facilities clean. Patients have had to defecate in disposable trays and throw them out the windows
Juan has not been visited by a specialist doctor in 10 days. Since he was admitted on the 5th floor of the University Hospital of Maracaibo, only resident physicians and nurses visit him once a day.
Juan -real name changed for protection- is infected with COVID-19. He sometimes experiences difficulty breathing. On Friday, June 5, he felt unwell, and a resident measured his blood oxygen and injected him with hydrocortisone.
“After that, I felt better, I was able to breathe better,” says Juan, who is only given one azithromycin pill a day.
For Juan, residents are not doctors although he recognizes that -much like the nurses- they have to be given an award because they are the only ones doing something for them.
«They are students, they have not graduated. We have to be seen by the doctors, “he insists on the other end of the phone.
“Negligence abounds in this place,” he claims.
“A man died waiting for a doctor to see him. He was awaiting the result of the test that was sent to Caracas when he started to complain of colon pain. The staff told him that someone was going to see him. He died and nobody came ».
As most of the patients confined with him, Juan is an asymptomatic case. He got infected at the Maracaibo flea market, the hotspot that threatens to become the most “dangerous” and “aggressive” in Venezuela, according to the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Juan is one of the dozens of people hospitalized by COVID-19 at the so-called “sentinel” University Hospital of Maracaibo, dedicated to caring for patients with the virus and run by the Ministry of Health since Monday, June 1.
Medical sources confirmed that 24 other people are kept with Juan on the 5th floor. There are no official figures on the number of patients hospitalized on floors 7, 6, and 5. Not all of them are confirmed positive cases; some are hospitalized under suspicion of having the virus.
Pedro – another patient whose real name we reserve- is one of them. He came out positive in the quick test, but he is still awaiting the result of the PCR test that is being processed at the National Institute of Hygiene in Caracas. He has been confined at the University Hospital for several days.
Since he was admitted, he has experienced difficulty breathing and awaits an x-ray test to see the state of his lungs. His treatment consists of a chloroquine pill and a half-hour dose of oxygen every six hours.
«The staff told me they don’t know how to take me to the x-ray room downstairs to check on my lungs. I can’t get out of bed because I become short of breath and it takes an hour to go back to normal, ”He tells on the phone, his voice breaking as she struggles to speak.
As of Thursday, June 4, 2,087 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Venezuela. 138 of them are in Zulia, of which at least 100 are related to the flea market hotspot.
Unsanitary conditions
Conditions are not the best in the most important health center of Zulia, Venezuela’s oil state.
The water service is irregular and there is no cleaning service. «Some days patients cannot bathe because there is no water. We received water every two days for a little while, just enough to fill a bucket ».
Juan can wash himself every day because his relatives were allowed to bring him wet towels and managed to collect water in a plastic container.
Juan has not seen anyone cleaning the floors or the bathrooms and says that the sanitary conditions are dire. “The residents and the nurses collect the trash themselves and try to keep everything in order. These people are worth their weight in gold”
Sanitation is not guaranteed due to the lack of running water and general maintenance added to the lack of air conditioning to relieve the heat in Maracaibo, a city where temperatures can reach 100F.
“It is complicated because it is very hot and that makes breathing more difficult,” says Pedro, who affirms that the worst hours are at noon when the sun is at its best.
If there is no water and no one cleans the toilets, how do you relieve yourself?
I have seen people defecating on the food trays and throwing them away, answers Juan.
And where do they throw it?
Through the window.
Pedro is one of those people. He cannot get to the bathroom without a wheelchair because he loses his breath. “I could not help it and I had to relieve myself here. A nurse told me to throw it out the window.”
On those disposable foam trays, patients are fed once a day. The menu is the same: Two arepas with shredded chicken without salt or vegetables for breakfast and two others for dinner. Rice and bean for lunch. “It is Mercal food,” says Pedro.
The three meals are delivered together between 1:30 and 3:00 pm
Pedro and Juan do not eat the hospital meal. Their families bring them food every day, a benefit allowed by the managers of the health center since May 28 after patients complained.
“I share my food with a boy who does not have any, but most of those who do not receive food from their relatives have to eat the hospital meal,” says Juan.
“We try to help each other. If someone is feeling good, he or she helps those who cannot carry water to bathe or wash, or whatever one needs.”
Juan says that he is staying in the hospital out of responsibility and to avoid infecting other people, but he confesses that had he known what the situation was like inside, he would have kept his treatment at home. “I just have to soldier on and recover soon.”
Translated by: José Rafael Medina.
