What a Canadian couple experienced in a Cuban hospital

MIAMI, United States. – Although the date had arrived to leave the Island, a couple of tourists from Quebec, Canada, had to remain in Cuba forcibly 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 learn first-hand the Cuban Public Health system.

“Caroline suffered from acute peritonitis; “Her appendix burst,” Maurais told Radio Canada.

The situation required Caroline to undergo emergency surgery. Despite the attention of the staff, the hospital infrastructure left much to be desired, Maurais explained: “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 published suggest that it is the “Arnaldo Milián Castro” Provincial Clinical Surgical Hospital in Santa Clara.

During the operation, the doctor tried to calm the tourist. “Here we don’t have infrastructure or resources, but we 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.

Caroline subsequently had to continue her recovery in a hotel due to a lack of medical supplies at the hospital. “The hospital staff could not provide her with the necessary antibiotics,” her husband said. The necessary medications had to be administered intravenously during her hospital stay, and there were no other options available, the Canadian explained.

The couple made a call through social networks, and thanks to the response of their family and friends, they managed to obtain the necessary medications. “Tourists from our region who were traveling to Cuba brought us the necessary medical supplies,” Maurais commented.

Despite having travel insurance, the man had to resort to the informal market to buy juices and ice cream that his wife needed to maintain her liquid diet.

“It is crucial to ask if the destination has the infrastructure and resources necessary to deal with 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.”

Canadian tourists: from bad to worse in Cuba

This same week, the case of Canadian tourist Faraj Jarjour, who died on the Island at the end of March, and whose widow and children were waiting for his body in Quebec and mistakenly received the body of a Russian citizen, came to light, according to the CTV News Montreal channel.

Faraj Jarjour, a 68-year-old Canadian man, died in Varadero on March 22. The tourist suffered a heart attack while at sea, during the second day of the 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 transport 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 documents necessary to repatriate the body.

However, once the family gathered the documentation and paid $10,000 for the transfer, instead of Jarjour’s body they received that of a Russian man, visibly younger, with tattoos and a full head of hair. “It wasn’t my father’s body. It was another person who didn’t look anything like him,” Miriam Jarjour, Faraj’s daughter, told the Canadian press.