Liana speaks from the Red Zone: “If the country needs us, we will be here”

As a child, Liana Aguirre Chávez liked to play doctors, wondering how one person could be in charge of the health of many others. Therefore, she decided to study medicine.

Today, at 23, she is a sixth-year medical student convinced of her calling and capable of overcoming personal and family fears for the benefit of the COVID-19 patients whom she assisted at an isolation center in Bayamo, a city in the eastern province of Granma.

It was in the early hours of the morning that she spoke with ACN, her voice muffled up in a face mask but brimming with heartfelt conviction.

“I was on call and then I went to bed, and now I feel like a child with a reversed schedule," she said, exhausted after endless shifts in completely atypical circumstances. “As physicians we are aware of the complexity of our profession of choice, so we take up the challenges imposed by a pandemic that has already claimed many lives in Cuba and around the world.

“We work in schools fitted out as hospitals where the on-call teams were made up of only three doctors for many patients, but in general we managed and relied on the necessary resources. This is a huge responsibility, and we are always looking for ways to help them and provide the best possible care for their full recovery.

Particularly hard to her was the sight of teenagers and children under 10 who were infected with the dangerous disease. “Interacting with the little ones is always very nice, especially when they show you their appreciation with a smile. We wish they were not here, but if they come we take care of them with all the love in the world, as they are our foremost priority,” she remarked.

Added to the risk-related unrest was the separation from her loved ones and co-workers at local children's hospital. It was perhaps the main reason for her family’s concern. “Be very careful,” her mother would not stop telling her in every phone call. “However, now my family is proud of me, knowing that the country needs us, and we will be here for as long as it does,” she concluded.