http://themilitant.com/2017/8145/814551.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 45 December 4, 2017
Cuban doctor: Why we went to West Africa to fight Ebola
Below is an interview with Dr. Enmanuel Vigil Fonseca, 34, one of the
participants from Cuba at the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students
held in Sochi, Russia, Oct. 14-22. It was conducted by Róger Calero, a
delegate at the festival from the Young Socialists in the U.S.
BY RÓGER CALERO
Enmanuel Vigil Fonseca was one of 256 Cuban doctors and nurses who went
to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea-Conakry to fight the Ebola epidemic
from 2014 to 2015.
All were members of the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors
Specializing in Disasters and Serious Epidemics, created in 2005 by
Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader that year offered to send 1,586 doctors
and 36 tons of medical aid and diagnostic resources to help victims of
Hurricane Katrina in the United States. Washington refused the offer.
Reeve was a Brooklyn-born volunteer in Cuba’s war for independence from
Spain, which began in 1868.
Over the last decade the contingent has provided emergency care in 19
countries, twice in Haiti and Chile. The mission in Sierra Leone was
Vigil’s seventh. He had also volunteered in Venezuela, Western Sahara,
Ecuador, Nepal, Haiti and Peru.
“When we arrived in Sierra Leone, what we found looked like a warehouse,
not a hospital,” Vigil said, with bodies lying everywhere. He praised
the work of international teams that set up the treatment center from
scratch, and the collaboration with medical personnel from Sierra Leone
and other countries.
“We found patients vomiting 20 to 30 times a day. They needed to be
hydrated, and we began to give them as many IV lines as necessary,” he
said. Other medical personnel in Sierra Leone didn’t do that — their
instructions were to avoid direct contact with the patients.
“We made the decision to hydrate the patient, and the survival rate
began to change,” Vigil said. When the Cuban volunteers got to Sierra
Leone, the mortality rate was 80 percent The Cuban’s treatment helped
reduce it to 29 percent.
“The first thing we had to do was to break down the barriers between the
patient and the doctor,” he told me. “Sierra Leone is a country that had
been at war for years. And here you had a white man, with green eyes,
covered completely in a body suit, about to stick you with a needle.
“You don’t ask the patient lying down on the floor to get up so you can
examine him. You sit down on the floor with him,” Vigil said, describing
the humanity and respect with which Cuban doctors and nurses treated
each patient. “We asked them what kind of work they did. We asked them
about their families.
“They began to recognize us through the face mask and body suit,” Vigil
said, “and then you saw a smile on their faces, you saw hope.”
When it became known that the survival rate was higher at the center
with the Cuban personnel, many afflicted with Ebola came, asking to be
admitted there.
“We were full and told them there were no more beds,” said Vigil. “It
doesn’t matter, we want to be with the Cuban doctors,” patients would
say. “‘Then come on in,’ we told them.
“To us, those lying on the floor were not sacks of potatoes,” Vigil
said. “They were human beings.”
“‘Why are you still here treating me if you know I am going to die?’”
one man asked. “I had to tell him, ‘Yes, you are likely to die, But if
so, you are going to at least die with dignity!’”
The way Cuban volunteers treated patients was a frequent source of
conflict with center administrators, Vigil noted. They said it wasn’t
“cost-effective” to use medication and IVs with patients who had very
little chance of survival.
“‘It’s a lost cause,’ they would tell us. But we were going to do
everything we could, even if they were dying,” Vigil said. “They are
human beings! That’s what we are taught in Cuba.”
Every morning at shift change, we would review the discharges, how many
had died, and the number of patients, he said. “We referred to the
patients by their names. We found it disrespectful to call them ‘Patient
1’ or ‘Bed 1,’ as some did.
“And then we would all join in a prayer — Cuban, American and Sierra
Leone personnel, as well as survivors of the disease who stayed in the
center to help because they were immune to the disease, believers and
nonbelievers,” said Vigil, who added that he’s a Catholic.
There is an outstanding book about the experiences and accomplishments
of the Cuban medical brigade in West Africa, Zona Roja: La experiencia
cubana del ébola, by Enrique Ubieta, who traveled with them.
“People have asked me why I write about the Cuban doctors,” Ubieta told
a meeting in Havana in 2016. “I don’t write about the doctors. I write
about the solidarity and internationalism that is at the heart of the
revolution. I write about the seeds we are sowing inside and outside of
ourselves. Every time a Cuban doctor takes part in a mission abroad,
they renew themselves as revolutionaries.”
“One of the biggest accomplishments of the revolution in Cuba is the
family doctor system,” Vigil said, the neighborhood-based clinics that
provide primary care free and on demand.
Vigil normally works at the Nguyen Van Troi polyclinic in Havana, one of
nearly 500 across the island. Together with the family doctor-and-nurses
offices, they are the backbone of Cuba’s medical system. Everyone in the
neighborhood knows his or her doctor, said Vigil, “the elderly neighbor
who brings you a cup of coffee, the mother of a child you cared for,
everyone.”
“Haiti was the hardest,” of his other internationalist missions, Vigil
said, describing how he witnessed the devastation imperialism has
imposed when he was part of a mission there after Hurricane Matthew in
2016.
“They have tried to replicate our system in other countries, but
capitalism won’t allow it,” he said.
As Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara said, the only way to be a
revolutionary doctor is to make a revolution.
Related articles:
How Cuba’s revolution transformed workers’ lives
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home