Puerto Rico's looming medical crisis and even money is running out - Breaking Daily News

Puerto Rico's looming medical crisis and even money is running out Dr. María Rodríguez shakes her head. She's the medical director of Concilio de Salud Integral de Loíza, a community health center in a small town in the northeastern portion of Puerto Rico. Inside the clinic, with her hair pulled back and large glasses framing her eyes, she appears every inch a practical and compassionate health care provider. Yet today, she is struggling. She's been told the center has just six hours worth of diesel. It's been a week since Hurricane Maria besieged the island, yet fuel distribution has been inconsistent throughout the island. When those hours are up, Rodríguez will likely have to shut the doors. "What else we can do?" she asks. "I haven't seen anything like this." For 24 years, she's worked at the center, which serves about 15,000 underprivileged patients each year. Despite the possibility of a power outage, she and her co-workers are still trying to provide services. In normal conditions, the center provides everything from primary care and pharmacy services to X-rays. "We can do some things. I have a stethoscope and the antiseptics and I can prescribe. But the pharmacy can't work with that, they need the system -- they need labs to provide medications to these patients," Rodríguez says. "The desperation that all these people have, they've lost everything -- on the whole island," she says. With the fuel and power shortages, she expects the No. 1 health concern in the days ahead will be infectious diseases. As people who need medications do not get them, she predicts mental health issues will become a problem as well. "It will get worse before it gets better," she says. Her feelings are shared by other health care providers on the island, who believe a medical crisis is about to unfold. But it isn't inevitable, since preventive steps can be taken now. That's the opinion of Dr. Robert Fuller, an emergency medicine physician at University of Connecticut and International Medical Corp. A 'complicated mess' Fuller's been in medicine for 27 years, and though he has arrived at the scene of disasters for a dozen years, the conditions in Puerto Rico were a surprise, he says. "I didn't realize it was gonna be corner-to-corner everybody affected by the storm," says Fuller, squinting into the sunlight. "Every family's been touched and disturbed in some way or another. And the degree of destruction -- the power the storm had -- took me by surprise." Communities are disabled by the storm, he says, yet it's fuel and electricity that are driving this disruption. "If we had good logistics and good communications, things could probably settle out a little faster," Fuller says. However, the lack of those things could lead to a medical problem, since medications might not be delivered where needed. Puerto Rico is a "complicated mess" right now, he says. He has driven around the island, and there are wires down, which will make it hard to light up the houses. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source News : CNN, USATODAY IF YOU LIKE VIDEO PLEASE subscribe to my channel You Click Subscribe: https://goo.gl/uBnEBa Website: https://goo.gl/uBnEBa Thanks You For Watch