• ANDROS LOZANO

Updated Tuesday, November 22, 2022-18:46

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  • PAPER The three preventable deaths of the Ricart Roca brothers: "If God existed, he would not have let this happen"

The last will of the

Senegalese Ablaye Mboup has ended up being fulfilled.

He asked Queen Letizia by letter to help him with the visa that never came from her son.

His doctor begged the Spanish political and diplomatic authorities for five months.

60,000 people claimed it through a

change.org

campaign .

And in the end it was achieved.

This past Monday, early in the morning, still with his suitcases on his back and an infectious smile,

Cheikh, the eldest of Ablaye's three sons

, walked through the door of the hospital room where his father is staying and she hugged him.

It was a long, nervous hug.

Now, while Ablaye is aware that the hourglass of his life is about to empty on the upside, he knows he won't be alone when it does.

It was his great fear.

Pass away without a loved one with him.

"My son is already here. Now I will leave calmly.

I just wanted to die holding Cheikh's hand,

" explains the patient.

The boy, who landed at Malaga airport, went directly to the Costa del Sol hospital.

He had never been on a plane.

He had never left Senegal.

He has flown to Spain from his native country to watch his parent die.

Ablaye is terminally ill.

He weighs 35 kilos.

He suffers from

pulmonary arterial hypertension

, a rare disease that affects an average of between 15 and 30 people per million inhabitants.

His body can stay alive for hours, days, or a few weeks, at most.

His cardiologist, Rafael Bravo, probably the person who has done the most to get Cheikh a visa,

thinks he won't last until Christmas.

Last week, EL MUNDO published that Cheikh Mboup had managed to get Spain to grant him a visa thanks, mainly,

to the constant efforts of his father's doctor

.

After achieving it, both have spent their first night together.

"We talk about the future, even though I know I'm going to die. He has a three-month visa. He can try to find a job,

send money to his mother, his brothers

... I want him to try.

I can't anymore

" explains Ablaye on the phone.

"I know I'm dying. But all this has given me life."

Ablaye fell ill in 2010, a year after arriving in Spain, where he emigrated,

leaving a job in a bank office in his country

.

Here he began to earn more money selling on the beach as

a mantero

than in Senegal.

Ablaye realized that his health was not good while he was climbing Mount Teide with some friends.

He felt dizzy and suffered a syncope.

When he returned to Fuengirola, where he dedicated himself to offering towels and bathing suits to bathers, he saw that it had not been an occasional thing.

He kept feeling bad.

He was constantly short of breath.

At that time he weighed 85 kilos.

He was strong and athletic.

Cheik Mboup with his father, Ablaye Mboup, and the patient's cardiologist, Rafael Bravo, this Tuesday. CHRONICLE

At the Costa del Sol hospital, he was diagnosed with the disease.

Oral drug treatment was prescribed.

He evolved well until 2018

.

Later, his vital state worsened.

The doctors ruled out performing a transplant of one or two lungs because she was responding well to the drugs and because she lacked a stable family or close environment in Spain that could help her in case of complications.

He is currently in a cachexia situation, in a terminal state.

Every week the doctors extract between seven and nine liters of liquid accumulated in the body.

Dr. Rafael Bravo, an expert in his disease, has been treating him since 2017. Three weeks ago he explained to Ablaye that his life was ending.

He recommended that he be admitted to the hospital, since the patient lived in Fuengirola, in a shared apartment with other compatriots who, like him, are dedicated to street vendors.

The National Pulmonary Hypertension Association

sent a letter to the Queen on Tuesday 8 November.

"We contact her Majesty to request her questioning in an extreme and humanitarian situation," she read at the beginning of the letter.

"Bureaucratic deadlines should not come before humanitarian reasons and causes, and even more so if they are related to the end-of-life process.

We know of His Majesty's involvement with humanitarian causes and the close link with rare diseases

, so we We desperately resorted to his appeal as the last option to be able to offer Ablaye a humanized death next to his son".

The night before her son's arrival,

Ablaye barely slept

.

He was "very nervous," says his cardiologist.

He was afraid that Cheikh would get lost or that he would have complications on the Dakar-Madrid or Madrid-Malaga flight and that he would not know how to solve them.

"When he saw us, he was happier than I was.

We hadn't been together since January 2020 [it was the last time Ablaye traveled to Senegal].

It's sad to meet again for me to die, but life is like that.

It was worth it to endure

" .

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