BUENOS AIRES – When Augusto Briceo hugged his mother in the coVID-19 intensive care unit bed, he said he felt the body part through his protective gloves and felt full of peace.
“I closed my eyes and tried to get the gloves there,” the 59-year-old pediatrician said. He stroked his hair and soon after, he died.
Despite his pain, Briceo felt lucky.
The Mater Dei Health Center in Buenos Aires is one of the few medical services still being developed in Latin America to allow family members to be with patients dying from the new coronavirus, dressed in masks, shields and protective clothing against infection.
Visits to COVID patients are general in Europe and more common in the United States.
Britain was reassured by its regulations to visit COVID-19 patients in April after politicians and the public were horrified to learn that Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, 13, died in a London hospital after contracting the virus.
In Germany, at the start of the epidemic, the country’s hospitals suspended all patient visits as a precautionary measure, but re-established them in May with restrictions. At Berlin’s largest hospital, Charity, patients are entitled to a single guest depending on the day, those who are considered seriously ill have no such restrictions. But at the same time, guests are limited depending on the case of patients who are still considered contagious.
In Spain, hospitals and nursing homes now allow such visits in a controlled environment. At Hospital 12 in Madrid, one of the largest in the Spanish capital, relatives get appliances and take turns moving to the patient’s room or intensive care unit. These visits are still prohibited in Italy.
In Latin America, which has been relatively behind by the new coronavirus, the circle of family visits is rare in the region. Some hospitals in Chile and Brazil allow them. At least 11 hospitals in Argentina already allow it and others are contemplating doing so.
Fernanda Mariotti’s mother was hospitalized at some other facility in Buenos Aires, where doctors refused to let her daughter see her because the institution’s regulations for patients with COVID-19 did not allow it.
Mariotti, a 53-year-old pediatrician, said she was convinced that her mother’s death last month was partly due to the ‘pain and fear’ of feeling separated from her family.
Mariotti has introduced an online crusade urging hospitals to allow visits to critical coronavirus patients and has noticed thousands of responses across the region, many of which tell traumatic stories of isolation of their dying loved ones.
She says elderly or disabled patients on specific visits from at least one parent.
Argentina has recorded approximately 350,000 coVID-19 shows and more than 7,000 deaths.
Cristian García Roig, head of extensive pediatric care at Mater Dei, said he believed that if medical staff can safely treat COVID patients, family members can simply stop at them safely with the same precautions.
Starting in April, Mater Dei began allowing 15-minute visits from parents accompanied by medical staff.
Minors with less serious illnesses or patients with mental or developmental disorders may also be accompanied full-time by a parent who will need to pass a two-week quarantine before leaving the hospital.
The General Hospital Dr. Rodolfo Rossi in the Argentine town of La Plata allows some dying patients with COVID to be visited through a family member as long as that user is part of a high-risk organization and wears protective equipment, Maria de los Angeles Mori said. the head of palliative care at the hospital.
He said the ability to be with a dying magnet was worth more than the threat to many.
“Dying alone is not the same as being accompanied,” she said. “Saying goodbye and not saying goodbye is very different.”
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David Rising in Berlin, Danica Kirka in London, Aritz Parra in Madrid, Eva Vergara in Santiago de Chile and Marcelo Silva de Sousa in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this story.
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