Covid-19, in the corridors of the medical distress


  • Photographer
    Jorge Iván Macías Mejía
  • Prize
    3rd Place / Deeper Perspective/Deeper Perspective
  • Date of Photograph
    05-07-2020
  • Technical Info
    f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/100s, ful frame

A journey inside a hospital tat take care of patient with Covd-19.

Story

At 8:30 p.m. a group of doctors arrives on the last shift of the emergency area. This public hospital adapted four rooms to serve patients with covid-19.

"Every patient who arrives should be considered as covid-19 until proven otherwise, so we must bring protective equipment at all time," says Dr. Katia. Putting on overalls, boots, surgical gown, mask, filters, goggles, face shield, gloves and hat.

You can hear the beep of the monitors that give vital signs, the music from the doctors 'cell phones, the nurses' talk, but mainly, the moans of patients in pain who cannot breathe well because their lungs are too weak.

Bed by bed, doctors analyze each patient's symptoms to see if there is recovery or not. Some of the patients will walk out of the hospital, while others will leave in a black bag.

When the patient is barely able to breathe a ventilator is placed, which becomes an extension of his lungs to keep them running, but only 3 of 10 intubated patients will survive, affirms Dr. Héctor.

Dr. Quetzalli remembers a case that was really hard. On May 12, two patients were unable to breathe at the same time, a 72-year-old woman and a 42-year-old man, and they had only one ventilator available. " I had to make a decision that does not correspond to me", she confesses.

A disinfection area was adapted in one of the hospital corridors. Everything that leaves the emergency area must be sanitized. The shape of the goggles is marked around their eyes, while others already have burns on their faces from the use of protective equipment for long hours.

In this hospital a doctor died from Covid-19 and there have been dozens of infected.

"More than anything, you create empathy and stand with other patients, to think that perhaps I could have been the person lying there isolated, far from my family without knowing what will happen to me, ignoring if I will die alone”, reflects María, one of the doctors who tested positive for covid-19, but who recovered and returned to work.

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