A Cuban woman denounced the situation of her mother, an 83-year-old woman, to buy the medicines she needs for her heart disease every month.
Well-known television presenter Marta Yabor Ballbé reported in the ‘Receipt’ section of the newspaper Rebel Youth, The difficulties his mother is going through, who resides in the Lawton cast, in the municipality of Ten of October, in the capital. The lady has her medication card at Teresa Blanc i Jardins pharmacy but can almost never purchase them.
According to the witness, the queues are exhausting. There are people who spend the night there and monopolize all the shifts. The old woman goes to the pharmacy at 6:00 in the morning and the lowest number she arrives is 50 or 70, without this guaranteeing she will be able to buy her medicines.
Pharmacy officials allege they have no obligation to what happens in the queue. But they are also unable to inform the population of the amount of drugs in stock, forcing users to wait in line for six to seven hours. Many times, when it was their turn, the medicine ran out.
To all this is added the slowness of the employees. The place opens at 8:00 in the morning and at 12:00 in the afternoon, barely ten people have attended.
“At 1:00 pm, half the pharmacy staff leaves, and one or two people are left waiting in line, with tremendous disgust and desire to finish, to the point that you can’t ask how much medicine is left.” , needs Marta Yabor.
The announcer wonders why the delegate of the People’s Power does not organize young people to act as messengers of medicines for the elderly population, as has been done in other neighborhoods. There is only one messenger and it already serves too many users.
Faced with this situation, she proposes that the elderly and other vulnerable people be guaranteed, on a rotating basis, a priority so that they can achieve the drugs they need to live.
In the opinion of the pro-government journalist, this issue is a source of suffering and conflict for veterans, in a country with a serious problem of population aging.
“There is the question of why in the social work that is being done in the neighborhoods, it is not prioritized once and for all that there is a definitive solution so that our seniors don’t suffer as much in these grueling drug queues. Because anyone gets a heart attack there, ”he concluded.
The shortage of medicines is one of the most serious problems facing the Cuban people, in the midst of a serious health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Seniors are particularly affected by the fact that they usually suffer more health ailments and are more prevented from spending several hours in a queue.
Last June, a woman recounted the 12-hour hell of waiting to purchase standard drugs in a neighborhood pharmacy in Santos Suárez, also in the municipality of Deu d’Octubre.
In addition to the low supply, other irregularities occur in this establishment: nurses who supposedly come in to ask a question and leave with medicines, as well as coleros who mark from the previous day and take turns during the morning.
“As a 65-year-old and vulnerable person living alone, I ask Public Health to do something for us at this pharmacy, on behalf of the older adults and mothers with children we bought there,” the veteran pleaded.