“We, who did not have more than two wakes per month, last week did 8 funeral services” “They don’t treat us in hospitals. The COE does not attend to us, I had to take my husband out in the car we used for the funeral service so that he could go to Jujuy (Capital), and they would attend to him ”. “I have a neighbor who was taken out dead because the COE never attended and they make him pass as sudden death.” “If we continue like this, we are going to have to start choosing.”
The apostilles are from people consulted by Salta / 12 and others who expressed themselves desperately in local media Libertador General San Martín, head city of the Jujuy department of Ledesma, located about 170 kilometers from Salta Capital. The path known by, if not all, of the Salta people, is the closest to reach the departments of Oran, about 50 kilometers. Today, one of the cities of Oran most complicated by Covid-19 is Colonia Santa Rosa, 70 kilometers from Libertador.
“The health system is collapsed,” Juan Carlos Córdoba, of the Marina Vilte union current, told Salta 12 and neighbor of Ledesma. “We got to the point that people die at home and the sick have to move to the capital by their own means because there are no beds”. He stated that in the Hospital de Libertador, Oscar Orias, there are only 8 respirators, for a city of 70 thousand inhabitants. He saw how they took a neighbor who died at his home without being treated in the health system. This Saturday they held a “cultural move” in order to raise funds and, if possible, get respirators.
Fourteen deaths in 7 days
From the accounts, the situation collapsed over the weekend. He commissioner of Libertador, Pablo Calizayahe said in an interview broadcast by Channel 2 of Jujuy, “During the weekend we had a lot of people who died in their homes. There have been 14 since the first of August ”.
“They stopped being numbers to become people you know. Not all (the deaths) are from Covid or are certified for that reason … but cAny death that occurs must be taken as Covid, “said Libertador Mayor Oscar Jayat, in an interview uploaded on the official Facebook site of the Municipality. The communal leader affirmed that the disposition of the provincial government of Gerardo Morales is that deaths of this nature are taken as deaths from coronavirus. “We are going through a pandemic and it is happening all over the world. We did not expect the virulence with which it was presented, ”he said.
Morales visited the Libertador Hospital last Thursday. He inaugurated a new “oxygen tube to guarantee oxygen in the Hospital,” he said when speaking to the local press. I affirm that the ibuprofen treatment used in Córdoba is used (which also acquired the Oscar Orías Hospital), and asked that those involved in an already overwhelmed situation “do not lower their arms and fight this battle with the certainty that the Hospital is in good hands.”
He coordinator of the Jujuy provincial COE, Omar Gutiérrez, meanwhile, showed concern given that throughout the province and in Libertador “the coronavirus is causing deaths not only in people at risk and older adults but also in young people”. But he attributed the situation to “social behavior and how we behave.”
“It is in the hands of people to defend themselves, to protect themselves, to try to prevent this infection from causing harm.” In none of the accounts of official sources, all uploaded on the official website of the Municipality, was there talk of the Ledesma company, criminally denounced for the spread of the disease.
The legal advisor of the SIndicate of Workers and Employees of the Sugar Sugar Mill Ledesma (SOEAIL), Juan Giusti, meanwhile, assured that the complaint filed before the Federal Justice against the company denounced for acting with negligence and spreading the disease, apparently, had no movement. “We were not notified of anything,” he said.
The complaint was filed on July 27 before the Federal Prosecutor’s Office No. 2 of Jujuy, in charge of Federico Zureta. Making a comparison of the performance of the federal judicial sphere in Salta, in contrast to Ledesma’s complaint, the speed that occurred in this province with the immediate indictment and arrest of two workers accused of spreading the disease is striking. One of them was only charged for failing to comply with the rules established in the pandemic. The other (now in charge of the Oran Justice), could be prosecuted for spreading the disease, which has a penalty of between 3 and 15 years in prison.
Undertakers to transport the dead, and the sick
“The funeral pomp passes in front of the houses where the families (of the deceased) are isolated. So the car stops for a while so that they say hello from a window ”, said Pablo Lazarte, delegate of SOEAIL, who is also in charge of the funeral service in the hands of the Union. The service is small, and normally there are up to two burials per month. Instead, “In the last week we had 8 services,” he said. He stated that when the COE removes the body, he puts it in a bag and goes directly to the drawer that closes it to be transferred to the cemetery. “At least six of them must have died from Covid, the others I do not know. But there is no wake for anyone, “he said.
Lazarte also works at the Ledesma company. He started having symptoms in mid-July and was given leave for 14 days. They never did a test or a PCR after completing the isolation. “Until now I have not recovered my sense of smell. And I went back to work on July 30 “said to Salta / 12.
As he recalls, the infections in the company began a little before July 10, when one of his colleagues had peritonitis. When he went to the hospital and got tested, he came back positive for Covid-19. Then “10 colleagues with symptoms fell,” and they continued working. Ledesma acknowledged in a statement issued on Wednesday that at the Ingenio there are 221 workers with coronavirus and 7 deceased. For Lazarte, the deaths are 9 (plus their direct relatives), and many more infected workers. “It became common for colleagues to say ‘you got it cheap'”, when they meet again after the isolations.
He added that in his opinion, if the company stopped two sugar mills, it was not by its own decision but because, given the number of people to be isolated, “it ran out of workers to handle them. He indicated that the same happened with the harvest fronts. “Of almost 20 fronts there are, three are without activity.”
The funeral pomp not only moves the dead in Libertador. This week it was learned that a family asked a company to lend them one of the cars to get to San Salvador, the capital of Jujuy. The desperate tale of Naomi, the wife of who had to be taken in that car, indicates that “they do not attend either the Hospital or the clinic. They tell me there is no clinic in Ledesma. I went to the Hospital and they did not treat him. At 12 I had to come with my husband to the house because he was sucking cold. I had to take out the hearse and put it in Jujuy. I took it in the car that they carry the dead“The woman said between tears on a local radio station. Who was in charge of the task was the son of the transferred patient, Emanuel Valdez.
Time to choose
Fabián Guerrero is a general practitioner and medical director of OSPAIL, social work of SOEAIL. The social work sanatorium does not have intermediate or intensive therapy, so it works directly with the sector of the private health system of San Salvador de Jujuy. But before an overwhelmed system “We have no response from the private sector, less from the public. We call and we have everything full. Cannot refer patients. Patients die without being able to access a respirator “, He told a bit desperate about the situation, which also ends up overcoming it despite the efforts.
He added that before the decision of the provincial government to centralize the entire private and public health system in its hands, it should now be directed to the provincial COE to designate the beds for the most serious cases. “I have colleagues from (Hospital) Orias who say that two or three died on guard duty due to not having respirators and they could not be referred either”.
In a scenario with no visible solutions for now, Guerrero said that with “colleagues we are about to make decisions because we don’t know what to do.” “And what decisions are you referring to, doctor?” Asked SaltaI12. “To (decide) who can use a respirator”, replied the doctor.
–
