By Jessymar Añez.
Yaleidy López, 18, didn’t hear her baby cries, she died at dawn on May 15. She had preeclampsia. Before arriving at the Manuel Nuñez Tovar Hospital, she convulsed in the Aguassay ambulatory, a town in the Monagas state; there, doctors cannot attend her due to the lack of supplies.
Her relatives denounced to the media that her death occurs because of the lieutenant in charge of the gas station did not allow them to re-fuel the ambulance.
On May 16, Luisa Guatarasma, Yaleidy’s grandmother, told by phone that her granddaughter had pregnancy pains on May 14, the doctor ordered transfer her when she convulsed and said he could not attend her. The doctor also made a report to the ambulance driver to present it at the station to allow him to re-fuel, but after three hours of talking, the National Guard officer denied the gasoline.
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The ambulance driver waited a lot, the officers said he wasn’t sure about it was an emergency or not, and the woman worsened in the ambulatory. Then, a Yaleidis’s cousin looked for a truck, they put a mattress in the back and started the way to the hospital. But half-way, they run out of gasoline.
“The ambulance arrived at the Hospital at dawn, and given the emergency, she was direct to the labor room. My granddaughter suffered a thrombosis during labor, the baby’s head got stuck, and doctors had to make a tremendous effort so she can birth,” detailed Luisa. The baby is in the intensive care unit.
Sad and shock
The family of Yaleidis asked for research and said to the military taking action to prevent something similar from happening to another mother. “Today was to us, but we don’t know who can be tomorrow. We must stop this.”
In Augassay, located 40 minutes from Maturin, the capital of Monagas state, people are in shock and sad because of the death of a young mother, and because it is not the first time that something similar occurred. Luis Guzman, a resident from the town, told that the same day that Yaleidis was in the ambulatory, three emergencies arrived at the ambulatory, and no one could be transferred neither.
One of those cases was a kid who fell from a mango’s tree, and he broke his hips. The parents went to the gas station to ask for gasoline to take him to the hospital, and apparently, the same officer refused to sell them. “The transfer made it because of the neighbors donated the gasoline,” Guzman said.
