The Two Epidemics that caused Ernesto Disability

2021-04-01 12:59:19 / web.radiorebelde@icrt.cu / JC Caballero Puig

In May of the year 1958, Nieves walked from one place to the other holding Ernestico with his arms. The baby aged 5 months only. The female neighbor helped to decrease his fever, she bathed him and applied compresses and even coffee on his feet, which is a very popular ointment in that zone in that zone in the center of Sancti Espíritus province.

Nieves doesn´t stop thinking of how many children of that zone showed that fever, and the after-effect appeared later. She wants to take away those negative ideas, but it is impossible.

63 years later of those long nights of the year 1958, I have before me that baby, who is a specialist in use, exploitation and equipment maintenance of the local Movimiento de Tierra (Land Movement), named Ernesto González Rodríguez.

She thought the cause of having one foot smaller than the other one, had been an accident, an incorrect manipulation in the labour, talking to that worker of the Ministry of Construction, I saw the consequences of two epidemics of the Cuba of the 1950 decade of the XX century, Polio and Fulgencio Batista government´s abandonment of the children´s population, a victim of an Epidemics which killed hundreds of lives from 1906 to 1958, and the survivors like Ernesto, ended up having disability as an after-effect.

Cuba carried out the national massive vaccine campaign against the Polio in 1962, and there were 5 million dosages of the Sabin oral vaccine applied which covered the 87.5% of the children population from 1 month to 14 years of age.

It was since that year that there were no deaths due to that virus that can cause paralysis, and it is transmitted through water, the polluted food or the contact with infested people.

In 1994, the World Health Organization certified that disease´s elimination in Cuba.

“I recall the enemies of the Cuban Revolution used to say the then vaccines were to become Communist children.” Ernesto recalled.

He considers himself as a happy man, useful to his country. He used to work from 1975 in the Construction sector without losing a working day. The remarkable disability while he walks means for him the conviction that the Cuban Revolution is the best that has happened to his motherland.

“I filled my heart with optimistic feelings, I faced and overcome my disability, but I gained my coworkers´ affection due to my work commitment, so no one calls me lame.” He said.

When Ernesto González Rodríguez hears that Cuba is immersed in an anti-Polio vaccination. He looks into the past. He does not remember the evenings of May 1958, but he remembers Nieves´s suffering, his mother if she were alive, then she did not have to regret a son´s disability as a consequence of a preventable disease through a vaccine.

By Claudia Díaz Pérez