• The metropolis has announced that new reinforcements and new transfers are planned in the coming days for Guadeloupe.

  • A sign that the health situation is deteriorating in this French island grappling with a surge of Covid-19 of unprecedented brutality.

  • Yvan, liberal nurse, Karim, Norman nurse came to reinforce the CHU of Pointe-à-Pitre and Tania, who takes care of the cold room of the CHU, reveal their upset daily life for two weeks.

"Sixteen deaths in a weekend for 400,000 inhabitants, it is unprecedented ... and dramatic", breathes Yvan, liberal nurse in Guadeloupe.

For two weeks, the Overseas region has suffered a wave of Covid-19 of extreme violence.

If the metropolis has sent reinforcements, and announces new human and material resources for the next few days, the caregivers on the spot describe a health system drowned under the Delta wave.

"My phone rings a hundred times a day"

“I've been practicing here for eleven years and I've never known that,” Yvan laments.

Today, all of my patients are positive for Covid-19.

None are vaccinated.

He is, says he always respected barrier gestures ... and never caught the Covid-19.

What threatens him more is burn-out… "I can no longer provide all of the care because my phone rings a hundred times a day," he regrets.

I have had preventable deaths, it's very hard.

The conditions of care are no longer the same.

We changed the gravity bar.

Because today, hospitals are saturated.

"

However, Yvan, who follows cancer patients and very old, is used to the last sighs.

“Usually, I take good care of the end of life.

But there it was too brutal.

I have heard 25-year-olds say to me: “I saw myself die”.

"

How does he explain this brutal wave? The low vaccination rate plays a role, but not only. “So far, we have never had a real wave of Covid, so we have no collective immunity. The delta variant is highly contagious, virulent, with serious symptoms, which need to be seen in the hospital ... In addition, here we have a lot of overweight people, twice as many diabetics as in the metropolis, the Covid is bathe in it! In short, we had everything to make it explode! What saddens me the most is that we could have anticipated. "

However, for him, despite the aid from metropolitan France, the shortage of equipment continues.

“There is a lack of oxygen for the patients, but also of material for the caregivers.

I managed to miraculously find gloves in a grocery store deep in the countryside!

Many colleagues are infected.

And one of them died of Covid-19.

"Sending 250 volunteers is good, but we have 1,000 cases of Covid per day ..."

"We are talking about disaster medicine, I confirm"

Karim Mameri, nurse and health manager in a hospital in Normandy, is part of the reinforcements who arrived on Tuesday August 10 at the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital. Whoever coordinates the volunteers does not hide his shock. Currently, patients over 50 are not sent to intensive care. "But if places become available, this threshold will be readjusted," he adds. As of Wednesday morning, we had 31 patients in the Covid emergency room, 15 in the non-Covid emergency room. And five free beds. So if hospitalization is necessary for many, a choice must be made. “Sorting difficult to live with. "Dramatic choices, which we have never experienced," resumes Karim Mameri. We are talking about disaster medicine, I confirm. He agreed to extend his mission for a week. And welcomes the arrival of a dozen psychiatrists and psychologists who have come to support patients,but also caregivers.

Another proof of the doldrums in the hospital: space is lacking in the cold room and in the morgue.

"Usually, we have three or four hospital deaths per day," says Tania Foucan, medical examiner and hygienist at the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital.

Currently, it is 15 to 16 deaths.

To be able to keep the bodies, the hospital received a huge container, placed in the parking lot.

“It's extremely tiring physically and mentally,” she continues.

We must both transform the services into a Covid unit, train caregivers and receive patients.

Every day, we have to make incessant trips back and forth between the services, the morgue, the container and the reception of the funeral directors.

"

“It's a silent humanitarian disaster

and invisible "

But this concrete vision of the health crisis is not shared by all.

Indeed, videos are circulating on social networks denying the problem.

And on Facebook groups, some wonder: should we believe the images of corridors filled with stretchers or empty waiting rooms?

“When you enter this hospital, there is no agitation, recognizes Karim Mameri.

It's very disturbing, it's a silent humanitarian disaster

and invisible, summarizes Karim Mameri.

We do not see people in respiratory distress in the streets.

The beaches are open.

For us caregivers, it's complicated this gap between outside, a paradise island and a hospital where we cannot necessarily treat a 60-year-old patient.

He regrets that a "handful of eccentrics" spread rumors a thousand miles from reality.

The authorities have also clearly identified the problem.

The region organized a conference open to all Guadeloupeans on Wednesday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. to talk about the epidemic and vaccination.

𝗙𝗔𝗖𝗘𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘 |

🗓️Wednesday August 18, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.


✅ Specialists answer your questions about covid 19 and vaccination via “Facebook live” on the pages of @ Departement_971 and the Guadeloupe Region.

⤵️ pic.twitter.com/9ynOFAM2ZA

- Region Guadeloupe (@CRGuadeloupe) August 17, 2021

"We note that there is a lot of false information which is disseminated in the opinion, in particular via social networks, justifies the region in a press release.

We have therefore decided to carry out an information and transparency exercise by responding directly to the questions that Guadeloupeans are asking themselves.

"It is not only on social networks that doubts persist ..." Some still deny the reality of the situation, confirms Tania Foucan.

Caregivers are yelled at by families of the deceased who say it can't be the Covid!

"Karim Mameri prefers to keep in mind this 75-year-old patient, angry at this disinformation and who told me" thank you and courage.

It gives fuel ... and a lot of emotion.

"

Society

Coronavirus in the West Indies: New reinforcements and new evacuations in sight

Society

Coronavirus in the West Indies: The army will deliver 100 tons of medical oxygen to Martinique

  • Guadeloupe

  • Delta variant

  • Coronavirus

  • Health

  • Covid 19