Story By: Ana Lacasa, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
This tragic young Mexican nurse who reported the shortage of medical equipment to fight the pandemic has reportedly taken her own life after contracting the virus at work.
Maria del Carmen Galeana was working with COVID-19 patients at the Raymundo Abarca Alarcon general hospital in the city of Chilpancingo, in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero when she started showing symptoms of the virus.
She was sent into self-isolation by the hospital’s management along with four other nurses who were showing symptoms.
She took her own life a week later at home according to official sources. No further information on the incident has been provided at the time of reporting.
The nurse, whose age has not been reported, had previously shared messages explaining the sacrifice health workers were making in Mexico and the exhaustion they were suffering.
Galeana had shared complaints from doctors about the lack of equipment in hospitals and had written on 2nd May that Mexico was not taking the pandemic seriously enough.
She wrote: “While the deaths are not your deaths, you will not understand the seriousness of what we are going through.”
She added that the pandemic is “not an invention from the government to keep us at home, to break the economy, to brainwash us with 5G”.
She later called for the Governor of Guerrero to set up a temporary shelter for health system workers who were dealing with coronavirus patients.
Local media report workers at the hospital where Galeana was employed had reported a lack of personal protective equipment at the facility.
Guerrero is one of the 10-worst hit states in Mexico by COVID-19 and according to the latest figures from the Johns Hopkins University, Mexico has registered 97,326 cases of the virus and 10,637 related deaths.
The ViralTab page is created by and dedicated to professional, independent freelance journalists. It is a place for us to showcase our work. When our news is sold to our media partners, we will include the link here.
