> >3 Doctors Who Belong to the Human Family > Wed, 9 Feb 2000 06:13:40 -0500 > >Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit > >THEY BELONG TO THE HUMAN FAMILY >by Raisa Pages > >Granma Internacional Digital Edition >9 February 2000 > >THIS is a story about three women doctors, who, along with their husbands, >helped the unfortunate from different parts in the world. They've since >returned to Havana, and you can find them overcoming exhaustion and material >shortages in the ophthalmology unit at the Calixto Garcma General Teaching >Hospital. > >While abroad, they left behind children, parents and brothers and sisters, >to adopt a larger family: the human race. One learned about the cruelties of >the war in Nicaragua and cured indigenous children; another coped with the >isolation of an island where she vaccinated and treated its African >inhabitants; and the third battled to save an Arab child's life in the >throes of a blinding sandstorm in Libya. > >A LITTLE BALL FLEW FROM MY CHILD'S EYE! > >"One night, in Jinotega, a mother brought us a baby she was nursing and told >me, octor, a little ball flew from my child's eye.'" > >"The ball was the crystalline lens of the eye, perforated from severe >malnutrition. My husband and I saved his life, but he never recovered his >sight." > >Dr. Marta Martmnez Carballo was 26 when she came face to face with the >cruelty of war and the effects of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. That >was in 1982, in Matagalpa, in the northern portion of that country. > >When she left for Central America, along with her husband Mario Gonzalez, a >pediatrician who's now working in Brazil's destitute region of Araguaina, >she was just beginning her ophthalmology specialization. > >"Caring for the war wounded has marked me for life. I treated illnesses that >you come across only in books. I saw children with just three grams of >hemoglobin, despite the fact that they lived in cattle county where there >was milk. > >"It pains me to know that in Nicaragua poverty has gotten even worse, but we >planted a seed there which is now blooming thanks to the presence of other >Cuban doctors in that suffering nation." > >TWO CUBAN DOCTORS ON AN ISLAND > >The baby didn't recognize his mother, Dr. Carmen de Prada Sanchez. He hadn't >been around her smell since he was six months old, when she left for the >African island of Sco Tomi and Principe, in 1977. > >Nor did he recognize his father when he came back to Cuba. Hours before his >child was delivered, Dr. Nestor Marimsn left for the African island, where >six month later, his wife would join him and, together, they would stay >there for 25 and 18 months, respectively. > >In Principe-an island 90 miles from Sao Tomi, which had a population of 5000 >at that time-"we were isolated from the world," recalls Carmen. "The airport >didn't even have radar. It was located in the mountains. There wasn't any >television and we received letters through Angola. > >"We gave mass vaccinations against tetanus and typhus to the entire >population of Principe. My husband and I were going to the farms where they >lived. > >I saw people die of large roundworm. We barely had resources. There we >treated many cases of malaria, parasitism, acute anemia, malnutrition and >for the first time I saw someone die of rabies. > >"When they evacuated the island, the Portuguese colonizers took everything >with them and left the hospitals abandoned. There weren't any medicines or >instruments. > >"Initially we used the same remedies that they were using to treat people. >They had no experience in the use of industrialized medicines." > >When Carmen and Nestor met up again with their child, he didn't call them >mother or father, but "those guys". Years later, the youth would understand >the immense gesture of love his parents made to humanity. > >AMIDST SANDSTORMS > >"Because the child had a lot of phlegm, I'd warned the mother not to leave >him alone, lying down with the bottle of milk. In Libya it's common to leave >infants like that, with the bottle in their hands. And that's very dangerous >because they can suffocate if they inhale the milk. > >"But his mother didn't listen to my suggestion and the child inhaled the >milk. I gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation because the oxygen respirator >wasn't working. I saved him on the first try, but later... > >"Libya's customs are very different than ours. He was barely one year old, >and he reminded me a lot of my two-year-old who I left in Cuba. I kept him >on artificial respiration and I went to attend to another child who had >ingested kerosene. > >"When I returned to see how the baby was coming along, I found him dead. >They took him off the artificial respiration too soon. An Egyptian >anesthetist criticized me for giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation, >because he said that I should protect myself from his many germs." > >While she tells stories of her life as a Cuban doctor overseas, Dr. Marma >Elena Tamayo, 44, a specialist in ocular tumors, says that she arrived in >Libya as a pediatrician and stayed there between 1984 and 1986, in the >province of Nalut, along with her husband, surgeon Ramsn Lujan Coley. > >"I'll never forget the night when we saved a child who was suffering from a >skull fracture. During the trip to the hospital, wind storms erupted. The >child was in cardiac arrest and I revived him, even though the windstorm >made it impossible for us to get our bearings in the desert." > >(c) GRANMA INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL EDITION. La Havana. 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