MIAMI, United States. – Although the date to depart from the Island had arrived, a tourist couple from Quebec, Canada, were forced to stay in Cuba due to a medical emergency. On April 3, Caroline Tétrault was admitted to a hospital on the Island (not identified by the media) due to appendicitis, which saved her life and also allowed her and her husband, Christian Maurais, to experience firsthand Cuba’s public health system.
“Caroline suffered a case of acute peritonitis; her appendix burst,” Maurais told Radio Canada.
The situation required Caroline to undergo emergency surgery. Despite the staff’s care, the hospital infrastructure left much to be desired, Maurais detailed: “There was no light, there were dogs around, it was like a scene from a horror movie.”
Although Maurais did not specify the name of the hospital where his wife was treated, the images he posted suggest it was the “Arnaldo Milián Castro” Provincial Clinical Surgical Hospital in Santa Clara.
During the operation, the doctor tried to reassure the tourist. “We don’t have infrastructure or resources here, but we do have good staff,” he told him, according to what the man told Radio Canada. “They saved my wife’s life, I can’t say otherwise,” he added.
Subsequently, Caroline had to continue her recovery in a hotel due to the lack of medical supplies at the hospital. “The hospital staff couldn’t provide her with the necessary antibiotics,” her husband said. The necessary medications had to be administered intravenously during her stay in the hospital, and there were no other options available, the Canadian man detailed.
The couple made a call through social media, and thanks to the response from their family and friends, they managed to obtain the necessary medications. “Tourists from our region traveling to Cuba brought us the necessary medical supplies,” Maurais commented.
Despite having travel insurance, the man had to turn to the informal market to buy juices and ice creams that his wife needed to maintain her liquid diet.
“It is crucial to ask whether the destination has the necessary infrastructure and resources to handle a medical emergency,” he advised. “If it hadn’t been for the people of Mauricie and my family, I honestly don’t know what would have happened.”
The couple stated that they do not plan to return to Cuba.
Canadian tourists: from bad to worse in Cuba
This week, the case of Canadian tourist Faraj Jarjour, who died on the Island at the end of March, came to light. His widow and children were waiting in Quebec for his body, but they mistakenly received the corpse of a Russian citizen, according to CTV News Montreal.
Faraj Jarjour, a 68-year-old Canadian man, died in Varadero on March 22. The tourist suffered a heart attack while in the ocean on the second day of his trip to the Island with his wife and children.
His relatives told CTV News that, due to the absence of a doctor at the Meliá Varadero Hotel where they were staying, they had to wait hours for emergency services to move the body from the tourist facility.
The family had to return to Canada while the body remained in Cuba, waiting for the death certificate and the rest of the necessary documents to repatriate the corpse.
However, once the family gathered the documentation and paid $10,000 for the transfer, instead of receiving Jarjour’s body, they received the body of a visibly younger Russian man, with tattoos and a full head of hair. “It wasn’t my father’s body. It was someone else who looked nothing like him,” Miriam Jarjour, Faraj’s daughter, told the Canadian press.
According to CTV News, last Sunday the family still did not know the whereabouts of the body. According to Miriam, a Canadian government employee indicated that it was not their responsibility, but that of Asistur, a Cuban medical insurance company that had delivered the wrong body. However, the family had never been in contact with the insurance company.
“We Canadians are not protected in Cuba,” the woman lamented.
This Wednesday, it was revealed that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, Mélanie Joly, had intervened in the case of the Jarjour family.
“I have spoken with my Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, about the case of Mr. Jarjour,” Joly wrote on the social network X, this Wednesday. “We share the utmost concern for the unimaginable situation facing his relatives, with whom I spoke yesterday. Canada will continue to assist the Jarjour family until this situation is resolved,” she asserted. For his part, Cuba’s foreign minister responded to the post of the Canadian minister: “I spoke by phone with Mélanie Joly about the unfortunate incident related to the transfer of the body of a Canadian citizen who died in Cuba. Cuban authorities are investigating to clarify the incident. I conveyed my deepest condolences and apologies to the family and friends of the deceased,” he indicated.
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