While Cubans are betting on the discovery of an effective vaccine to immunize humans against Covid-19 or at least counteract its expansion, they have skeptically accepted the announcements of medical authorities, who have said that in March the use of vaccines on the Island.
“There is not a single drug in pharmacies to control scabies and they want to stuff us with the story that they will produce 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccines,” says Ezequiel Varona Diaz, a neighbor of Center Havana and father of three children. aged “critically infested with scabies” for three months.
“The doctors on duty, in any hospital, tell you clearly: ‘There are no medicines, solve by boiling clothes every day and bathing in hot water twice.’ We have been trying for three months with our three children, but we can no longer continue to boil clothes and sheets every day because water enters this municipality on alternate days, “objected Varona Díaz, who also confirmed that in his popular council, Colom,” the outbreak it’s not coronavirus, it’s scabies. “
In an advertising video released by TeleSur, the director of the Finlay Institute in Havana, Vicente Pérez, explained that Cuba had four vaccines in advanced stages: Sobirana 01 and 02, Abdala and Mambisa.
“Cuba is the only developing nation with vaccines against Covid in human trials. In March it could authorize use on the island and the goal is to vaccinate the entire Cuban people this 2021,” he said.
The official certified that Cuba goes further and has already offered these vaccines to Vietnam, Iran, Venezuela and India. “They will even be offered to foreign tourists visiting the island. Tourists will have the option, if they wish, of vaccinating in Cuba as well,” he assured.
Dr. Rafael López, a neighbor of Plaza, recalled that, as a contagious subcutaneous disease, scabies spreads rapidly through physical contact in homes, educational institutions and nursing homes, but with the right medicines it is cured in a matter of days or , to the fullest, in two weeks.
“To treat scabies the first thing is to kill the mites and their larvae with drugs that have to be applied from the neck down and let them act for eight hours. It is also possible to kill the mites with oral drugs, but right now they don’t exist. neither in the other area. in the area where I work, on October 10, scabies is literally pandemic, and the only recommendation is to boil clothes every day and bathe in hot water and macaw leaves. ” , recommended Lopez.
The administrator of a pharmacy in the municipality of Turó said that for about a year now she has been provided with some of the medicines to treat scabies such as lindane and benzyl benzoate.
“Permethrin is what occasionally comes in. But it doesn’t last even 24 hours because scabies is the real pandemic. I don’t know a single neighbor of the Sports Casino who doesn’t have scabies. People are resorting to self-medication with ointments to skin conditions such as clovetasol and triamcinolone, but the doctors themselves warn you that neither is effective in curing scabies, ”said this administrator.
The severe economic crisis that the country is going through is evident every day in the impoverishment of medical care, primary health services and the state of construction of the hospitals, polyclinics and medical offices themselves, where professionals do not even have ‘optimal instruments, materials and inputs, or in existence, to offer their services with the quality that, according to the rhetoric of the regime on the island, distinguishes Cuba internationally.
Diagnosed with an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s, Aurora Oliva’s mother had problems with the fact that the woman can barely fend for herself to meet her physiological needs.
“I went to the Family Clinic, where the medical staff explained to me that there was no material available for the care of bedsores, nor in pharmacies. That this material should be requested for medical certificate at the polyclinic, where he will later be assigned to the office, “said Oliva, a graduate in Mathematics and a neighbor of Platja.
“A week later, the nurse left me some nitrofurasone at home [pomada antibiótica] that she was the only one there, and the warning she had to learn to heal — because because of her workload she couldn’t do it daily. But nothing from sterilized gloves, gauze, swabs, iodine, chromium mercury, alcohol, which are needed to cure bedsores. In the midst of all this, the whole area is infected with scabies, including my partner who has not been able to resolve, not even Revolico, sulfur or ozone soap, “Oliva added.
Els Llocs, one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Havana, has been in isolation since February 12, when it was declared the epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic in Havana.
“In addition to the coronavirus, here in The Places is the epicenter of scabies. That people are sorry to call out loud is something else, but the outbreak of scabies is very serious,” confirmed a doctor while it realized the PCR to four families in one of the tens of quarters of this popular advice.
“I agree that it is really inadmissible to talk about a production of 100 million doses, of any vaccine, when it can not even produce drugs as basic as those needed to counteract the scabies outbreak that not only currently affects Havana, but in more than half of the provinces, ”stressed this doctor, who fears that people’s self-medication to get rid of scabies will cause them irreversible damage to their skin.
“The daughter of one of our nurses resorted to the ‘quitasarna’ which is used for horses, while a friend of mine is using with her grandchildren liquid to kill ticks on dogs. I have seen other cases that resorted to the “A mixture of vinegar with baking soda or petroleum jelly used for damaged hair. All these inventions are highly harmful and could lead to the acceleration of skin cancer, one of the most common in the country,” she concluded.