Torment in Ecuador: virus dead piled-up in bathrooms
29 April, 2020
Front line medics in one of Latin America's coronavirus epicenters are lifting the lid on the daily horrors they face within an Ecuadoran city whose health system has collapsed.
In a single hospital in Guayaquil overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients, staff experienced to accumulate bodies in bathrooms for the reason that morgues are full, health staff say.
In another, a medic told AFP that doctors have already been forced to summary and store corpses in order to reuse the beds they died on.
Ecuador has recorded near to 23,000 coronavirus cases and practically 600 deaths, with Guayaquil by far its worst afflicted city. However the real toll is regarded as far higher.
A 35-year-old nurse at the first hospital who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the trauma of what he saw had influenced him professionally and personally.
When medical emergency broke out in March, every nurse went from looking after 15 patients to 30 in the area of just a day, he added.
"So many persons arrived that... these were practically dying inside our hands," said the nurse.
Patients were discharged or referred to other facilities "to release each one of these beds" for coronavirus patients, he told AFP.
"They took out anesthesia machines from operating rooms to displace them with ventilators.
"Folks are alone, sad, the treatment wreaks havoc on the gastrointestinal tract, some defecate; they feel bad and think they'll always feel that way, plus they see that the person next to them starts to suffocate and scream that they want oxygen."
It isn't just hospitals that contain been overwhelmed, but morgues too.
"The morgue staff wouldn't take any more, so many times we had to summary bodies and store them in the bathrooms," the nurse said.
Only when the bodies were "stacked up six or seven high did they come to collect them."
A 26-year-old colleague, also a nurse, confirmed the chaotic scenes.
"There were many dead in the bathrooms, many lying on the floors, many dead in armchairs," she told AFP.
'Sanitary disaster'
Guayaquil's health system has collapsed beneath the pressure of the coronavirus, and it seems to be having catastrophic knock-on effects.
In the first half of April, the province of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil, recorded 6,700 deaths, more than three times the monthly average.
The disparity shows that the real COVID-19 death toll is much larger than the official nationwide tally of fewer than 600.
President Lenin Moreno has acknowledged that Ecuador's official coronavirus tallies "are short" of the true figures.
A 28-year-old doctor at another Guayaquil hospital, who also insisted on anonymity, conjured a similarly grim picture of health services in crisis.
"Bodies were in the corridors of the emergency ward for the reason that morgue was full," the physician told AFP, describing "20 to 25 corpses" waiting to be studied away.
"It had been up to us to accumulate and wrap the corpse and store it so we could disinfect the bed for the next patient," he added.
At the first hospital, refrigerated containers were earned to store bodies, some of which remained for up to 10 days.
Some members of the family "break the covers... therefore the fluids turn out. It's a sanitary disaster," said the 35-year-old male nurse.
'It kills you psychologically'
The number of daily deaths fell last week but that was scant consolation because of this nurse, who says he is tormented by what he has experienced.
When he goes home, after a 24-hour shift, his feet hurting, he tries to rest but then the "nightmare" strikes.
He dreams of running until he falls and knocks "open the toilet door with the amount of bodies... and you can't go back to sleep."
His home life in addition has changed. He's following strict isolation so cannot see his parents or brother.
When he goes home he commences his ritual of disinfecting his car and shoes, hosing himself down on the patio before washing his clothes in warm water.
"I eat on a plastic table away from everyone. I leave my house with a mask, I cannot hug anyone, not even the pets," he said.
Once in a while he considers the psychological mark left on him each and every time he has to put up with hooking them up to cannula tubes when what they really need is a ventilator.
"They let you know, 'It's okay -- provide them with oxygen and a slow drip serum and leave them,'" he told AFP.
"But what if that was my mom? Imagine if it was my father? That kills you. It kills you psychologically."
AFP sought comment from health authorities in Guayaquil but didn't get a reply.
A national public health authority official said he previously been in an emergency unit in Guayaquil where bodies were piled up.
"A morgue for eight deceased folks and you must manage 150 bodies, what can you do? You should put them anywhere close by you have space," he told AFP.
The official said the quantity of cases in Guayaquil rose dramatically and rapidly in a matter of days, overwhelming an inadequate emergency healthcare system.
"There is such a speed of contagion that it reflected a sizable number of seriously ill and a sizable number of deaths at a particular time," he said.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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