The image of Lara Arreguiz, a young woman from Santa Fe, in the northeast of Argentina, lying on the ground, with her head resting on her bag and covered with a denim jacket, has become a symbol of precariousness in recent days. of the Argentine health system. With her eyes closed and the mask on, Lara dozed on the floor of a hospital in her city, while she waited to be treated..

I couldn't breathe well, I felt tired and had a fever. She had Covid and was diabetic, a damned combination.

“I know that no one is going to return my daughter to me, but I don't want anyone else to go through this situation again.. This is how she expected to be treated at the new Iturraspe hospital. He felt very bad and needed to lie down.. I requested permission to get on a stretcher that was there and they did not authorize me. So he lay down on the floor to wait his turn.”. Claudia Sánchez, Lara's mother, recounts the terrible story on her Facebook profile, and accompanies it with the image turned into a symbol.

“A lady who was also waiting lent her her jacket to cover herself. I felt a lot of importance and that's why I took the photo,” explains the mother, who denounces: “She was a risk patient, insulin-dependent since she was 10 years old. We came from the [health center] Protomédico with a positive for Covid and bilateral pneumonia. I announced it from the beginning and even then they didn’t have any common sense and empathy. The doctors saw her lying there and looked at her like a freak and didn’t let her in until it was her turn. Not to mention the nine hours she spent in the emergency room. It was all very unfair. There was a lack of solidarity, professionalism and empathy.”

“Lara had a very late bed,” Claudia continues, “we went back and forth for almost two days to get her. And to therapy she went in the last moments. She was an at-risk patient and should have been a priority for care. Doctors take an oath and here they didn’t keep it.”

At home with bilateral pneumonia and an appointment three days later

Lara lived in Esperanza, 45 kilometers west of the city of Santa Fe. Last 13th and alerted her parents that she was not feeling well, and they took her to a health center. There were no beds, so they sat her in a wheelchair.. He left there with a diagnosis of bilateral pneumonia and an appointment to have a PCR three days later, reports La Nación.

Her situation worsened and her parents took her to the hospital, the father, Alejandro, tells the Argentine newspaper. While waiting to be seen, Lara fainted.. He still had a long time left, so he lay down on the ground. “She sat very upset and told me that she was going to faint. She began to cry and they took her into the infirmary and then again to wait in a corridor.. He told me that he wanted to lie down, and he settled on the floor and I put a jacket on him.. That's the photo that circulated,” says Claudia on Radio Con Vos.

“That was when a doctor or nurse who passed by picked her up and took her to the guard. There they administered oxygen and he calmed down.. But they told us there were no beds, so she was in the guard [the waiting room] until 9:00 p.m. and then they took her to the old Iturraspe, where there was a bed for her,” explained the father..

Only her father could visit her since Claudia was also admitted with Covid. On Thursday 20, after a severe respiratory crisis, Lara was transferred to the ICU, where she was intubated. At 3:00 a.m. her father was notified: she had died.