Maria Laura Avignolo
08/13/2020 - 7:00
- Clarín.com
- Society
Dr. Martha Cohen struggled her entire life between music and medicine . To resolve her permanent conflict between the piano, Chopin, Beethoven and pathogens, she married Ernesto Correa, an opera tenor and former first division rugby player from Tucumán, who was recycled as an architect. They live in Great Britain with their three children, a country where they fled from the crisis and hyperinflation. This Argentine doctor, a pediatric pathologist at the British hospital in Sheffield, went viral, explaining didactically the coronavirus to Argentines and the advances of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford.
“As I do autopsies, I am linked to post mortem microbiology. I give many lectures on autopsy and the infectious causes of autopsies. Nobody knew about this. We began to read many papers and, together with the Spaniards, we did a study on the coronavirus at the autopsy, ”says Martha from Sheffield.
Martha Leía and her sister Caly, a coach and journalist in Argentina, imagined what her sister's contribution and experience could be in this pandemic. Faced with each uncertainty or new news, she proposed: "Make a video . " And so this phenomenon of "I am Dr. Martha Cohen" was born in the networks and, especially, her details of the information on the progress of the vaccines against the coronavirus.
“I have nothing to do with the vaccine. It is simply my scientific view of being able to identify what has value. It is to digest my scientific gaze and put it so that people understand it. I think that was it, ”he says humbly.
But she has a broad view of all the vaccine projects underway. The second wave is forecast for September, according to the June 12 paper from Imperial College. But she considers that “there was not really a first and a second wave. The cases never stopped being. We must continue to maintain the suppression with social distancing so that these cases always remain low, "she warns.
Cohen in his office at Sheffield hospital, with the book he published on sudden death.
“The second wave will start in the European autumn and the peak will be when winter comes. Because in addition to adding the coronavirus, there will be the flu. There will be added patients who could not attend the consultation for fear of the corona, others who have sequelae of the virus, whether neurological, mental or respiratory. Then the coronavirus bomb will potentially be bigger than the first one ”, he warns.
Martha reports that the Oxford vaccine will already be in the third phase in early September. "The second replicates but instead of being 1,077 patients, there are more than 10,000," she explains. But she would not be surprised if there is a high percentage with minor complications , such as headache, muscle fatigue or temperature, that subside with paracetamol. No they are serious complications.With two doses, 100% of patients can develop immunity , depending on their point of view.
Cohen (third from left) on receiving recognition for his scientific work.
The British will surely be vaccinated first: health personnel and people at risk, who are diabetics, asthmatics, those over 50 and men over 45, hypertensive, immunosuppressed and cardiovascular. Until December, the vaccine will not begin to be distributed abroad, although factories in India are already producing at full throttle.
Daughter of the first pediatric doctors who landed in Trenque Lauquen , in the center of the province of Buenos Aires, Martha grew up between the piano, her parents' waiting room, a father who came from Peru to study medicine and became the director of the village hospital and a pediatric mother who was a doctor at the special school. A fundamental experience to understand Emiliano, her first son, with a disability.
A photo of his childhood in Trenque Lauquen.
The dances, the parties, the horseback rides in the grandparents' field, the long university vacations, when he prepares the subjects in the town to perform in La Plata. But his ability to help, of service, is the DNA of Trenque Lauquen and his parents .
Dr. Cohen is critical of the harsh Argentine quarantine. It considers it "ineffective". “If you look at the map of Argentina, it stayed low during the three months that we were in Great Britain with the peak and now they are still in quarantine and increasing. Right now, 45% of coronavirus deaths are in Latin America, including Argentina. I don't mean to say it failed. I believe that it has not been effective because during the quarantine of the hardest months what to do next was not planned . They started early and the crowd sold out. Meanwhile there are not enough tests, there is an oversaturation of clinics and all the intrinsic problems of Argentine health did not help. How can it be that with the longest quarantine in the world, cases are on the rise? I don't understand it, ”he wonders.
For this doctor, daughter of public education and a graduate of the University of La Plata, choosing her vocation was not easy. She was encyclopedic, she liked marine biology, but she didn't expect to spend her life on top of a ship because she wanted to have children. The vocational test was horrible: I could study everything. A second reoriented her: psychiatry, genetics or law.
Cohen, at home. She graduated from the University of La Plata and married a tenor and architect.
"Mom, with her great brilliance, suggested to me: 'Start medicine and if you don't like it, next year you will change,'" she recalls.
To La Plata. Gone was the piano teacher Marisa Mestre in Trenque Lauquen, for whom she was his first student. So she remembers it. “Martita was very diligent, she studied advanced works by Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy for many hours. She did concerts with her sister and when she comes from Sheffield, she comes home to see me. Her father is still alive and visits her every year. She has two sisters and a brother, all professionals. She went to South Africa to work before leaving for Great Britain ”, she said by phone from Trenque Lauquen.
As in all Buenos Aires towns, Martha left La Plata at age 17 to study and never returned to live in Trenque Lauquen . But there was her German piano from 1940, which was going to end up being an itinerant accompanying her on her moves, whom she missed. She took it when she went to live in Buenos Aires. But during the summers, the passion between Martha and the piano continued. She traveled to town to meet again. Today the piano is in Sheffield and of her three children, it was Martina who chose to be an engineer and a pianist.
“They are our affections. It is what gives me comfort. You feel that you are among the things that correspond to you and you feel comfortable. That is Trenque Lauquen for me ”, defines from Sheffield. When he retires he will return to his five hours of piano a day and music.
Martha arrived in Great Britain at the hands of another Argentine pathologist: Irene Scheimberg, who worked at the Royal Hospital in London. She convinced her. The costs of a large family persuaded her to settle in Sheffield, in the north of England, and not in London.
With her husband and children. Martina, Emi and Guille.
“I was desperate because there weren't enough research pathologists in Britain. Corralito by means of, I convinced her to come and she began working in the British Health Service (NHS). Martha is a machine to work with , she is extremely generous and nothing can stop her. It does not surprise me what he is doing to publicize the coronavirus vaccine. He is an exceptional person, who has given all the medical battles, even the most difficult ones ”, recognizes Dr. Scheimberg, his great friend, from London.
The nurses at the hospital have christened her "Sherlock Holmes . " It is a reward for her obsession with research, with new diseases because pathology is the diagnosis of diseases. Her specialty is sudden death. “There are always new diseases. Because there are always subclassifications, tumors that affect the child but not the adult and when they occur in an adult, they are a rarity. What I do most is sudden death. And the sudden death of the infant is the first cause of death in childhood and it is not yet known what one dies from ”, he clarifies.
Martha gives at least 12 SIDS lectures a year . She has written a book about it, and has donated the proceeds to a foundation for parents of children with disabilities.
" The sudden death is a diagnosis of exclusion. It is not known why the child died after taking a medical history, a complete autopsy and an investigation of the death scene. Because in reality it is a combination of the individual vulnerability of the child, due to his genetic constitution, that he is going through a period of development that makes him vulnerable from 2 to 6 months and that he is exposed to risk factors. Risk factors could be sleeping on your stomach, for example, ”he says.
“When I arrived in the UK, in 2003 and 2004, there was a change in the legislation, which made autopsies of sudden death of a still unknown natural cause, pass from the sphere of forensics - as is the case throughout the world. world - to the sphere of pediatric pathologists, as it is only in the UK. And that was incredible, because on the one hand I, who did not know anything about sudden death, learned a lot, "says Dr. Cohen.
It was there that he discovered the reasons. “Coroners love violent death. And this is a natural death. So not many samples were taken. They were mostly done in medicolegal morgues, where there was no microbiology, no genetics, and no metabolic analysis. Instead we do the autopsy in the hospital and I use everything in the hospital for diagnostic methods. I do electron microscopy, genetics, metabolic analysis, MRI. All my deceased patients have access to the same benefits as live hospital patients, ”he explains.
Thus he discovered that before 100% of sudden deaths were of unknown cause. Out of 100 deaths, there are now 40, so the result is 60 . “We know that 3% of deaths can be of genetic cause. There is a gene, a mutation. Now we find out because we do genetic analysis. You may have an arrhythmia, 4% or 5%. Then it may be that you have a metabolic disease, another 3%, a mitochondrial problem, another 3%. That it has some lethal poison for the boy, that someone has given it to him or that the child is a little older and has taken it, is another 3%. How we have been going down ”, he assures.
For her, her specialty "is an investigation of finite details and always having an open head, that there may be something new, that it is not black and white, that there are so many grays along the way."
Graduated. Cohen with her companions, in 1978.
Many things decided Martha to leave for South Africa, when paying $ 10 for a conference was a fortune for her in Argentina. The mother helped her.
He was working in the Children's Hospital, abandoned a bit by the novelty of the Garrahan. This is how he met his South African mentor, Dr. Kashula. When a friend had introduced her to Ernesto, a tenor and rugby player, and she had been out a few times, the letter arrived inviting her to work in South Africa. A dilemma that Martha solved boldly , in her express romance: “I'm going to invite him. If he wants me, he comes with me. If he doesn't come with me, it's because he doesn't love me enough and why am I staying ”.
Ernesto accepted but with conditions: "Before we got married," announced the tenor from Tucumán, green eyes, 1.9 meters. So they left for South Africa, where Emiliano, their first son, was born with a severe and special disability . Ernesto was Emiliano's father, emotional support, nurse, mentor, friend and sole caregiver. There, an inexhaustible love relationship began, through music, opera, and concerts that Emiliano adores.
They were offered to continue working in Canada, but they turned it down. They returned to Buenos Aires and Martha began her search for work, for contacts again.
Prime Minister Tony Blair needed scientists in Britain. Investigating physicians. Scheimberg, whom she met at a Latin American congress on pediatric pathology in Buenos Aires, encouraged her to go to Great Britain. The corralito, the economic crisis, they decided to start in a definitive emigration, in 2003.
There Teresa joins the family. A Peruvian who, together with Ernesto, who finished his architecture studies, is looking after Emiliano. He is the breadwinner, the emotional support, the grandmother of all, the family in immigration. After Teresa, her daughter has arrived. That Peruvian family has joined the Cohens as their own.
Extended family. With Teresa, who accompanies them to take care of her son Emiliano, with a severe disability.
“My sister is a Gemini like me, with a strong personality, she has a lot from my mother, who was a pediatrician. His imprint is that of mom. But he could never have done everything he did without Ernesto, an extraordinary father. My sister lives on top of an airplane, in a suitcase. When the coronavirus started, we talked. We plan. She liked my idea for the video. An outline was made and started. We never imagined that your videos would go viral. 'Decilo en 2.42' was my most important instruction, ”says Caly, who is a parliamentary journalist in La Plata.
Guille Correa is Martha's daughter, she works in content and marketing in London. This is how he describes her: “My mom is one of those people who says no to anything. Always think that anything is possible. Every goal you set is determined to achieve it. But it is connected to your emotions. We were always able to talk to her, ”she observes on WhatsApp from London.
“In South Africa, mom worked and dad took care of Emiliano, of the house. He was a tenor, he loved to sing. But in Britain he educated us and my brother while studying architecture. He graduated from Sheffield and works there, ”said Guille.
The covid entered the family home in March. Martha began to study passionately, to learn every day. "People have to know what is happening," he repeated, and that's how this adventure began.
Family picture. On the beach, in Portugal.
Martha believes that "mentors" are needed to warn about the risks of covid. They must come from the community itself, from the most vulnerable sectors, obviously supported by health systems and governments. "They will be able to save many lives because young people do not listen to their parents: they listen to their peers," he says. And it is they who are contaminating and increasing the risk of a second wave.
Dr. Cohen believes that one must learn to live with the virus until the vaccine emerges. “A country or the world cannot be paralyzed and stop manufacturing, selling, buying, eating, producing, because poverty is generated, poor nutrition is generated. Many more mental illnesses are generated, suicides that have already increased and also violence. Because there are those who say: 'Well, I'm starving.' But there is the one who steals or kills to have what he does not have, because he cannot work. With all this, the most appropriate thing would be - and I think that is what is going to aim to do at least in the United Kingdom - is to go 'extinguishing the fires' ", she concluded.
Don Ramón, his father and pediatrician, is 98 years old and continues to live in Trenque Lauquen in full quarantine. Listen to the video of Marthita, and smile. Mission accomplished.
London. Correspondent
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