Holguin pediatrician Juan Manuel Pérez Mir, is 75 years old and more than five decades linked to caring for children at the Octavio de la Concepción de la Pedraja pediatric hospital, is a good example of how useful you can be to society as long as you are accompanied by the will to practice your profession.
“I rehired myself because I am 51 years old and I still feel like I have a useful mind and the strength to go back to work and continue teaching new doctors and specialists.”
Then he remembers his beginnings in Medicine and the decision to work in his native Holguin.
«I graduated in 1973, I studied Medicine in Havana because at that time it was not possible in Holguin. First, I opted for Angiology but when I had been at the Calixto García hospital for a month and had to go in to amputate a leg, I understood that specialty was not for me. From there I went to the pediatric hospital and became a pediatrician.
«Then in 1983 I specialized in Gastroenterology, I really like that. I was doing very well at the pediatric hospital in Havana but I am from Holguin and I really like my hometown. Then I returned to my town. I never regret having returned to my province. In the house I currently live in, that’s where I was born.
In his professional career there are certainly many anecdotes from patients and family members treated. However, he confesses to feeling indescribable satisfaction when he meets many patients that he began to follow from the earliest ages of life and today are doctors and engineers.
«Wherever they see me, they call me teacher and that gives one a lot of joy, because they are not isolated cases, they are a few. When I became a doctor, I had to work very hard because since we were in the sixth year we had to work as doctors and even in the third year of the degree, when the 70’s harvest they sent us to work as doctors in the polyclinics in the fields and it was a difficult time, but unique.
Juan Manuel is one of the pediatric specialists from Holguin rehired once he retired who, given the need of the Health system to have his experience, did not hesitate to return to his working life in the gastroenterology service of the pediatric institution.
“A normal day in that service, although it implies that we are not doing colonoscopy or duodenal intubations due to resource limitations, consultations are held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and we serve the population of the province of Holguin, from Moa to Calixto García.”
Regarding the gastroenteric conditions that most frequently constitute the reason for admission and consultations in this northeastern territory, he warns that “many cases reach this service, but the most frequent are chronic diarrhea, chronic abdominal pain, gastritis and, to a lesser extent, hepatitis. I think that in this incidence in the child population there are issues to take into account because one always advises the need to drink boiled water and families do not comply, the children go barefoot, hence the incidence of gastritis, parasitism, plus arboviruses that are believed not to directly affect, but do affect the digestive system.
Juan Manuel Pérez Mir loves what he does and an example of this is an entire life dedicated to restoring the health of the little ones, a profession that he confesses he will carry out as long as his strength is with him.
By: Maylín Betancourt Verdecia
Translated by Radio Angulo
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