When Lucía Iñiguez Landín Clinical Surgical Hospital was inaugurated in 1998, the history of a health center began. As Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz said, “it was created as a reward and incentive for the people of Holguín“.
Throughout these 25 years, it has earned a prominent place in the development of clinical, surgical and diagnostic techniques and procedures, hence every year it assumes greater challenges, based on its potential.
With the presence of the highest political, governmental and health authorities of the province, the anniversary ceremony took place, where eight Lucia awards for life’s work were given to outstanding workers.
Dr. Luis Mario Carrasco Feria, director of the hospital, commented on its history and the challenges facing the center:
“We have 36 specialties, of which 12 are interconsultational. The country’s economic situation has had a significant impact, as in 2019 this center closed with more than 21 thousand surgeries and this year is far from that number, another of the challenges the hospital has had to face. However, our staff remains committed to the quality of life of patients, even when the material conditions are not optimal. We also face the improvement of the engineering system that has enabled a vital hospital.”Twenty-five years ago
Lucía Íñiguez Hospital, Public Health, Holguin
The second degree specialist in Imaging, José Alberto Álvarez Cuesta, was the founder of the Clinical Surgical Hospital of Holguín. Photo by the author.
The Lucia Hospital was born with advanced technology by having a Computerized Axial Tomography, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Multislice Equipment.
The second degree specialist in Imaging José Alberto Álvarez Cuesta, one of the eight workers recognized with the Lucía Award, witnessed its beginnings and remembers it this way:
“I was the first doctor in this hospital in the Imaging service, with the start-up of Computed Axial Tomography. At that time it was the first spiral or helical type tomograph that existed in Eastern Cuba and we had to assume the care of the five provinces of this region of the country.
“Only the CT scanner room and other nearby rooms were enabled to provide care. That was an enormous experience, so great that it has marked us for life.”
Álvarez Cuesta has witnessed the incorporation of procedures such as functional surgery for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and minimally invasive surgery, among others.Lucía Íñiguez Hospital, Public Health, Holguín, Cuba.
The Clinical Surgical Hospital of Holguin is also recognized for the quality of the different transplant modalities, among them renal transplants, consolidated as one of the best of its kind in the country, together with cornea and bone marrow transplants.
In this regard, the Head of the Abdominal Organ Transplant Service, Neyla Santisteban Collado, Doctor of Science and recipient of the Carlos J. Finlay Order, said:
“I lived the beginning of the Surgical Clinic. When this hospital started, we had our transplant service at the Lenin Hospital and we decided to move here because it was a new hospital and there were more conditions, more space to better serve transplant patients.
“We formed the surgical wards, we moved the beds from the warehouses to the ward ourselves and set them up, we created the surgical wards for surgical patients to come in and, likewise, we moved all our transplant equipment from Lenin to here. This is our hospital, and this room is our home.
Youth: guarantee of the future
Hospital Lucía, a quarter of a century dedicated to its patients
Youth is the fundamental pillar of this institution, such is the case of Dr. Wilber Jesús Riverón Carralero, a 2020 graduate and current first-degree specialist in Internal Medicine, who explains the contribution of this center in his training:
“Since I was in my second year of my career I was linked to the hospital as an assistant student first, then I was a vertical intern. The hospital has always been a favorable space both for the development of undergraduate students and for the professional development of postgraduates, since it provides care to patients, while consolidating itself as a space for professional growth for workers and teachers”.
It should not be forgotten that during the COVID-19 period, this center was considered the largest in the country in the fight against the disease, with more than 800 beds. These were very difficult times for healthcare and surgical activity, but they allowed for professional growth.
The Neurosurgery specialty has also been developed in the Clinical Hospital of Holguin with highly qualified personnel. For its part, the Ophthalmology Center, in addition to cornea transplants, has developed activities at the level of developed countries.
Lucia Hospital, a quarter of a century dedicated to its patients
Even when the shortages are real, this has not been an impediment to face the urgency and emergency that arrives at the hospital, to assist it and to give it a solution.
This anniversary is a reason to celebrate for those who by choice, chance or destiny have been or remain there with the firm purpose of restoring health, saving lives, sowing tranquility and bringing joy to the families of those who have ever required medical attention in this provincial hospital, which is consolidating as a giant in the northeastern territory.
To reach the work that is enjoyed today has not been an easy task, for it has had to overcome innumerable difficulties, but the uninterrupted work for more than two decades is translated in generations of white coats that bring light to the population of Holguin and other provinces of eastern Cuban.
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