The University of Medical Sciences of Holguín made known to its students the retaliation that could be applied to them if they refused to carry out the health investigations that allegedly support the diagnosis of coronavirus in the territory.
A source, on condition of anonymity, commented to CyberCuba that the university management had issued an official statement stressing that those who did not participate in the investigation ran the risk of disapproving and losing the right to pass the academic year.
This decision was informed to the students on Saturday by the Council of the University Student Federation of the house of higher studies.
In this way, the mandatory nature of the investigations was established, an activity whose usefulness has been questioned by some students, who have also pointed out the danger of contagion to which they are exposed during house-to-house investigations.
The FEU notification states that the research is “a fundamental part of a future evaluation of subjects” and that “each student must carry a notebook or similar where the teacher responsible for each area signs and evaluates their attendance and performance daily (…) “
“Each teacher must issue an evaluation on the first sheet of the notebook where they record the behavior of each one of us since we started the research so far, emphasizing our attendance,” says the note.
At the end of March, medical students collected signatures as an act of petition to suspend the investigations as long as they are not guaranteed “adequate hygienic-sanitary conditions”.
“We students of medicine and stomatology, who must go house to house in search of possible patients (of coronavirus) without adequate protection, have a very high probability of being infected, in addition to the fact that we will become direct transmitters of the virus,” they warned.
On that occasion, they requested three measures to participate in epidemiological control efforts, demanding that the Cuban government “at least two nasobucos per student”, “solutions for asepsis and antisepsis” and “a place with sterilization conditions for clothing and skin”.
A medical student and LGBTI + rights activist also drew attention on social media by expressing his concern about the risk of infection during that preventive activity.
“I think we are not fulfilling a function, people hide symptoms from you, there are no good action protocols from when you report patients with respiratory symptoms, the elderly who live alone, etc., until something is done,” he explained.
“These are times when it is better to be at home (as the rest of the population is sent) because we are large groups of students on the streets, gathered in places where there are already positive cases and at the end of the day we return to our homes where we also have family , the elderly, people included in the risk groups ”, he added.
This Friday, the Ministry of Public Health confirmed the spread of 97 health workers with the coronavirus, a figure that includes doctors, nurses, technicians and five medical students.
Cuban authorities recognized this Saturday 923 cases of coronavirus in the country and 31 people who lost their lives because of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
A total of 2,734 hospitalized patients and 192 patients who have been cured since the onset of the health crisis are also listed. Another 7,373 people are monitored in their homes from Primary Health Care.
Of the 923 patients diagnosed with the disease, 681 present stable clinical evolution. 10 critically ill patients and seven critically ill patients are reported.
According to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, more than 2,300,000 positive cases of coronavirus and some 159,000 deaths from the outbreak have been recorded worldwide.
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