Spanish volunteer doctors arrive in El Salvador to join fight against COVID-19

Some 30 volunteer doctors from Spain arrived in El Salvador on Wednesday to join the fight against the coronavirus at a time when the Central American country is facing a stage of high contagion, with almost 16,000 cases.

“You come to support our doctors who, day by day, fight to save Salvadorans; you are part of this now,” Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill said when she received the contingent at Óscar Arnulfo Romero Airport, 44 km southeast of San Salvador.

The doctors from the SAMU Foundation came from Seville, Spain, and were joined by doctors from Argentina, Portugal and Costa Rica.

As of Tuesday, El Salvador had totaled 15,841 coronavirus cases and 430 deaths.

“Each and every one of us comes as volunteers willing to give everything,” said Spanish doctor Juan González de Escalada, head of the volunteer mission, upon arrival.

He explained that his mission is “to transfer” the experience accumulated during the peak of the pandemic in Spain to the modern El Salvador hospital, in the west of the capital.

“We are still overwhelmed by the reception of the people of El Salvador and the excited embrace of their highest authorities,” SAMU Foundation said in a statement. “We feel an enormous responsibility and a lot of strength to work, with humility, hand in hand with Salvadoran health workers against the virus on all fronts.”

González announced that the team will reinforce the review of dress and decontamination protocols when discharging recovered patients from the hospital.

“This group of Spanish sanitary professionals are coming to help us. They are not Salvadorans, they are not collecting wages, or anything material, but they are coming to our country to save lives, to risk their own,” the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, commented on Twitter.