French Tourists Injured in Traffic Accident in Cienfuegos, Cuba

Nine of the 41 French tourists injured in a traffic accident in Cuba were reported in serious conditions, with danger to their life, by the direction of the University Hospital Gustavo Aldereguía.

Moises Santos Peña, deputy director of the institution, told Prensa Latina that eight of the nine patients registered in the code Red, underwent surgical interventions, mainly for head, facial and orthopedic traumas.

The accident occurred in the early hours of Monday afternoon when a tourist bus, traveling from the central city of Santa Clara to Varadero beach in Matanzas, collided with a truck traveling in the same direction.

Two of those injured suffered the amputation of a superior extremity in the place of the event at kilometer 205 of the National Highway, in the territory of the province of Cienfuegos.

The rest of the wounded, 24, including the bus driver and the tour guide, are in code Green, which means in no danger to their life, and eight in code Yellow, minor injuries, added Dr. Santos Peña.

Three patients are receiving assistance at the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital of Cienfuegos, 250 km of Havana, other five in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, three in the burn care room, because they presented burns due to friction, something very typical in this kind of accidents.

The hospital management highlighted the quick and synchronized way the emergency medical system in the territory acted, activated moments after the event occurred, and the promptness of the service of first aid by the polyclinics of the villages of Cartagena and Aguada de Pasajeros, adjacent to the main road of the island.

Jackie Le Roux, Chargé d’Affair of the French embassy in Havana, emphasized to the press the speed of the evacuation of such a group of injured and their transfer to the main facility of the health system in the territory.

Le Roux thanked the health authorities for the attention given to his  fellow countrymen, and as for saving their lives after the crash.