More than 90 percent of the life support equipment for patients suffering from severe respiratory diseases, such as COVID-19, are in operation.

Eduardo Leyva Vazquez's 6-year-old boy doesn't go to sleep every night until the time for applause has passed.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- His daddy is one of the technicians responsible for the fact that today in this eastern Cuban province more than 90 percent of the life support equipment for patients suffering from severe respiratory diseases, such as COVID-19, is in operation. It feels good, says Eduardo to describe his feelings when his neighborhood bursts into applause. More than once, he confesses, he has not been able to avoid the tears in his eyes.

Together with his colleagues Yoeni Peña and David Céspedes, this Life Support specialist at the Ernesto Guevara Hospital in the city of Las Tunas, returned to work a Drager pulmonary ventilator (model Oxylog 3000) that in other conditions would have been discharged. That today, is a luxury they cannot afford.

“The situation we have deserved it”, says the also graduate in Electro-medicine, who more than once has interrupted his night or early morning rest to urgently repair a device to which a serious patient is connected in that hospital facility. “It's the least we can do because you know it's a life that's at stake, he says.

THE BLOCKADE EXISTS, SO IT'S WORTH THE REDUNDANCY

Cuba is making great efforts to keep all hospital medical equipment in a state of flux, since it is forbidden to have easy access to new equipment and spare parts for existing equipment due to the economic siege imposed by the United States more than six decades ago. That long-standing disadvantage was compounded in recent months by the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the availability of all possible artificial ventilation equipment was an even higher priority.

“We created three work teams that have already recovered three, two in the municipality of Puerto Padre and another in the provincial capital”, explains Alberto Andrés Charles Martínez, director of the Provincial Center of Electromedicine. “The response of the group was immediate. Even colleagues who were on vacation and who were responsible for rebuilding the two fans in Puerto Padre were reinstated”, he stresses.

The task of these experts includes the maintenance and repair of the anesthesia and electrocardiogram machines, equally crucial in the intensive care rooms; of the former, two have already been recovered, which in less adverse scenarios such as the usual one would have been dismantled. Although it's easy to say, it's not that easy to do.

Fernando Ferrera Núñez, the deputy technical director, shows how the Telegram group, through which they exchange opinions with colleagues from all over the country, was quick to respond to the news that the manufacturers IMT Medial AG and Acutronic had ceased their working relations with Cuba, after being acquired by the American company Vyaire Medical Inc. “They were the suppliers of several of the equipment we have in the hospitals and that means that they will no longer sell us spare parts”.

“Fans are equipment for a specific purpose, with very specific parts and components that vary by brand and model”, says Charles Martinez. However, that has not stopped them: “we make adaptations that, without violating patient safety, allow us to put them to work. Something similar was conceived with the infusion pumps, while we waited for the arrival of more patient circuits, which is the part that connects the patient directly to the ventilator.

The task acquires more complexity knowing that the electro-medical staff takes part in the preparation of the Guillermo Domínguez Hospital, as an anti-epidemic installation against COVID-19. The commitment, necessary to put the territory in conditions to face more extreme situations and to relieve others who already suffer from them, adds to them not only the task of ensuring the proper functioning of the equipment placed in the rooms for SARS-CoV-2 positive patients, but also to guarantee the safe start-up of the rooms of other services that are being moved to different buildings. They do this and still complying with the established healthy distance measures.

The technicians do not have to stay here at the center all the time, says Charles Martínez, but remain contactable and move to the places that are needed, only those located in hospitals are permanent. From here we coordinate the work orders and assure them what we have in the warehouse.

“At the same time, we continue to provide other services because the Health System has not stopped”, says assistant director Ferrera Núñez. This is the case with the repair of the equipment related to the anti-vector campaign and hemodialysis, in addition to the ventilators in the intensive care ambulances and the oxygen regulators for patients who are bedridden in their homes.

AS IN GIRON

“We are trying to recover a Siemens Servo Ventilator model 900; they are older, but we are trying to work on them to see what can be done. But this will be another story”, Eduardo says before saying goodbye. So, it is somehow compulsory to think that years ago, abandoning the plane was not an option for the Revolutionary Air Force pilots who were fighting at a numerical disadvantage against mercenary planes.

Today, among Cuban electro-medical technicians, like Eduardo, there is a similar determination to save every last piece of equipment available. Simply because, like the airplanes over the skies of Giron Beach, there are no others to replace them and the lives of many depend on getting them up and running again.