Jose and the divine commendations .

Dr. Jose Hernandez has been a Vanguardia Nacional for thirteen years. He has been decorated with the third degree Lázaro Peña Order -imposed by the President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel-, the Distinctions for Cuban Education and the Manuel “Piti” Fajardo; the Jesús Menéndez Medal; the Armando Carnot Veulens Award and he is an Illustrious Son of Unión de Reyes and Adoptive Son of Matanzas.

That night in February 1980, in the early hours of the morning, Dr. José Hernández Hernández realized why he had been sent to a polyclinic in Manguito if in his municipality, Unión de Reyes, there was a position for a doctor when he graduated.

That little girl, barely one year old, on the verge of death in his arms, gave him the reason he had not understood until then. And although he had not completed his first four months as a doctor, without any experience, his hands and lungs saved that life that was leaving.

For an instant he thought about the futility of his purpose. Little Yanorkis Pino had been electrocuted by accident and was in cardiorespiratory arrest. There was no choice but to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and massage her infant heart.

Many years have passed and that is still his life experience, unforgettable. That day he became a doctor and a pediatrician at the same time, and then he thanked God for being on duty that morning at the polyclinic in a small town in Calimete called Manguito, far from his home. Just as he experienced it, it was a divine entrustment.

“My faith has helped me a lot, that’s why I have always tried to defend it”.

Bermejas-San Antonio de Cabezas

It all began in Bermejas, when Fredesvinda, the village midwife, welcomed a beautiful blond boy of eight and a quarter pounds into the house. He spent his childhood dressing and playing at being a doctor because his aunt, who was a seamstress, made him white baticas. Then, it was written, he would be the first doctor in his family.

Together with his mother.

And so it was. From the time he was in his third year of medical school, he was the doctor of his community. To this day, when he does not live permanently in his family home, he is still sought after there from various places.

And what an effort to study! A hip condition forced him to undergo surgery and kept him in bed for six months. So he finished the Abel Santamaría basic secondary school, in San Antonio de Cabezas, and started the José Luis Dubrocq pre-university, in Matanzas. He was the second in the ranking to take Medicine in that center.

In Manguito he served for two years and became director of its polyclinic. In Unión de Reyes he was director of the polyclinic and of the Municipal Directorate of Public Health. In 1987 he finished his specialty in Pediatrics and remained until 1992 in the intensive care unit of the Eliseo Noel Caamaño Hospital in Yumurino, due to his training in this specialty.

But Jose, as he is affectionately called by friends and relatives, has a very strong bond (blood?) with the piece of land where he was born and returns to his origins. (I am thinking now of the cartoonist and painter Manuel Hernández and the playwright Ulises Rodríguez Febles, and what the Guamacaro Valley of Limón represents for them).

It is then that he creates and founds the project of healthy communities in primary health care in the Cabezas-Bermeja villages.

«Health is a bio-psycho-social whole. For this reason, all the organizations of the territory had a leading role, Commerce, with the bodegas and stores; the post office; telephony…, in short, it was the whole community fighting for the health of its inhabitants. With the project, the people were empowered, although the leadership of the health sector was fundamental.

“We admitted the sick to their homes, under the care of the Family Doctor and the Family Nurse, who went to the homes to attend to the patients”.

Jose traveled all over Cuba with the project, presented it in Mexico and in eight cities in the United States, invited by the City Team of San Jose, California, which was working with vulnerable groups linked to drugs. The Cabezas-Bermeja project lasted ten years.

On the other end of the phone, there is always someone available.

During his term at the head of PAMI – Maternal and Infant Care Program – in the province, the lowest infant mortality rate in the history of Matanzas was achieved: 3.8 per thousand live births.

In 2017, Dr. José Hernández Hernández returned to the Matanzas Pediatric Hospital, this time as director.

«It was a difficult stage, of renovation of the work system. The hospital’s leading role was rescued, with significant achievements.»

I ask him what it was like to face a pandemic as contagious as covid-19 in a children’s hospital. And what it was like to manage and organize human and material resources, while trying to save lives, from three different sites in the midst of the pandemic’s greatest surge.

«We spent nights and early mornings that we thought the hospital was collapsing. Beds were set up in different parts of the city and were soon insufficient. Of the 208 beds available at the Pediatric Hospital, we set up 914 in annex centers and another 120 for non-covid patients. There were 1,034 beds in distant institutions: Canimao Hotel, Ciencias Médicas, Politécnico 27 de Noviembre and the Seminario Evangélico, in addition to our hospital.

«And all those patients were cared for by our own staff, which grew. My staff made me proud. Thanks to that hard work, we had only one death from covid. All that hard work and sacrifice made us worthy in 2021 of the Flag of Labor Prowess.»

A question arises on its own. I wanted to know what was more difficult for him, to fulfill international missions in Africa, with the health panorama of that continent, or to direct the Pediatric Hospital in the middle of the pandemic and, without thinking, he answered me:

«The confrontation with the pandemic was shocking, superior to the epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever, which I had just graduated, and to the two international missions in Africa. There is no comparison.

He himself was one of the many Covid-19 patients in the province.

I know that the doctors and nursing staff never finish their work. When they get home there is always someone who needs them. That is something I admire about Jose: he is always on the other end of the phone, ready to listen to you and help you. I can tell. He combines scientific talent, human detachment and a proven priesthood towards his profession.

And because I have known him since we were students and I know what a good pediatrician he is, also trained in Intensive Care, I came to interview him with the doubt of whether at some point he had regretted directing and because of this obligation to have stopped practicing his specialty.

But I soon realized what he had told me:

«I made my role as director compatible with my practice as a pediatrician. I always saw that role as more of a care role».

When I arrived there, six people were waiting for him, among them parents who wanted him to see their children. Jose is still that helpful and concerned pediatrician, convinced that his primary function is medical care.

I ask him to tell me about his time at the Pediatric Hospital, about the achievements of the children’s hospital in recent years, about children who have been miraculously saved.

He refers to a patient with a post-covid multisystemic syndrome that they managed to save and to a girl with a tumor in the mediastinum -a bronchogenic cyst- that the surgical team of the assistance center managed to intervene.

Again in February…

And certainly, his faith once again proves to the doctor that everyone is in the right place.

Around 12:00 midnight last February 13th, Dr. José Hernández was waiting for a colleague at Terminal 3 of José Martí International Airport in Havana. Before his eyes, barely six meters away, a young woman collapsed and almost fell to the ground.

A moment of uncertainty for many, but not for the doctor, now with more than four decades of experience. Quickly, on a rigid bench, he began cardiopulmonary resuscitation of the young woman, who he later learned had arrived from Cancun…

Mouth to mouth, external cardiac massage, initially alone and later supported by the patient’s grandfather…, until her heart started. Naomi, the young woman’s name, still breathing with difficulty and cyanosis, was taken on a stretcher to the airport medical station.

«After some time giving her help, the cyanosis disappeared and Naomi, conscious, smiled back at me when I told her that she was born again in her Cuba. I told her that in February many years ago I had to attend to a little girl with a similar situation to hers… I said goodbye to her mother Guadalupe, her grandfather and other airport officials, I was happy, very happy to have saved another life once again.

“I left her with her pupils reactive and conscious, in the hands of the SIUM team that was located, ready to transfer her to another institution.”

Many coincidences allowed Dr. José Hernández to be there to fight for the life of that unknown woman. He decided to take the trip, not planned, four hours earlier; he arrived at the airport at 10:30 at night and the person he was waiting for could have left among the first ones, but his procedures were delayed and he left in unison with this young woman, who before fainting collided with the luggage cart of the person he was waiting for….

“If the person I was going to meet had left earlier, I would not have been there to bring Naomi back to life… Thank you, my God, for choosing me again in this February 2025 to attend this cardiorespiratory arrest event outside an airport.”

Jose, the doctor, the pediatrician

Jose directed the Matanzas Pediatric Hospital Eliseo Noel Caamaño from 2017 to 2023 and was deputy director of Public Health in Matanzas from 2023 until early this year. He is currently head of the provincial Pediatrics Group and consulting professor at the children’s hospital facility.

Dr. José Hernández Hernández has been a National Vanguard for thirteen years. He has been decorated with the third degree Lázaro Peña Order -imposed by the President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel-, the Distinctions for Cuban Education and the Manuel “Piti” Fajardo; the Jesús Menéndez Medal; the Armando Carnot Veulens Award and he is an Illustrious Son of Unión de Reyes and Adoptive Son of Matanzas.

I almost left. Other people are still waiting for him. The afternoon and my visit have dragged on. I worry about the time I have stolen from him. As I start to save, I remember the first time we met. Then we were teenagers attending the classrooms of the Jose Luis Dubrocq Pre-University Institute, in Matanzas. And Jose, as I have already said, was on crutches.

Already standing up, I ask him: Have you ever imagined your life as you have lived it? He looks at me and takes some time to answer.

«I work eight, nine, even twelve hours a day. I am a simple little ant. My own life, the course of my life, what I am, is the glory that through me goes to my God. He has guided me, given me health, strength and wisdom».

Written by Maritza Tejera.