The young Cuban Dayan Sotolongo, who suffers from elephantiasis in both legs, is pleading for help to travel to Spain for surgery.
Dayan sent a message to the activist Diasniurka Salcedo Verdecia to facilitate his case. The young man needs 2,000 dollars to complete his paperwork and be able to leave Cuba; he already has the rest of the money.
According to what he told her, she needs to raise the money she is missing for her admission to the hospital in Spain.
"Thanks to the people who helped me from the beginning, little by little I was able to take care of my parents' trip, and thanks to the doctor and a friend who contacted me, I was able to gather almost all the money from my operator (SIC)," he detailed.
Dayan is a 19-year-old boy from Pinar del Río who can barely walk and suffers severe pain due to the fourth-degree lymphedema he has in his limbs.
"I am very ill and need urgent surgery; my paperwork extension expires on October 17, and I will not be able to have the surgery, and afterwards I could end up disabled," he emphasized.
He shared his phone number +5350781272 in case someone wants to call and verify his situation, as well as the bank cards for anyone who can deposit money.
"I can't even walk anymore," he emphasized.
In May, comedian Andy Vázquez held a live broadcast on his social media to raise money for Dayan, whom doctors in Cuba told that they have no solution for him.
"He already has everything to travel to Spain; a doctor or a hospital has already taken charge and told him that he is going to be operated on, he just has to pay for the tickets. They are two orphans, they have neither dad nor mom, they live alone. The sister has taken it upon herself to help her little brother, as is logical," he explained.
"The only thing he needs to be able to go to Spain is the money for the ticket. As you can see from his legs, he has to travel in first class because he doesn’t fit in a regular seat. The first-class ticket costs 1,700 dollars (on average) and his sister's ticket is 800. That would be a total of 2,500 dollars," Andy detailed.
In February, Dayan requested a humanitarian visa because in the Cuban healthcare system, which he relied on for seven years, he was not even given relief for his illness. However, there are hospitals in the United States and Spain that expressed willingness to study his case and provide care.
The boy does not have an accurate diagnosis and therefore does not receive treatment. He is left to his fate in a fourth-floor apartment in Santa Lucía, Minas de Matahambre municipality.
His mother passed away from a heart attack when he was five years old, and the family moved to live in Guantánamo for a while. There, he began to suffer the effects of lymphedema when he was 12 years old.
Due to her complex health situation and the absence of her mother, the pain of her father's death a year and a half ago from kidney problems was added.
"My sister (Dayanis Sotolongo) and I have been left orphans. We live here in Santa Lucía, alone. The government pays me 1,500 pesos for my social assistance check. They have never given me anything else," she commented.
Dayan decided to bring his case to light on social media to ask for help.
"Since I uploaded the video telling my story, people from the Communist Party of Cuba and doctors came to visit me, people I had never met before. They said they were going to start helping me, and days are going by, but so far I haven't seen anything," he then said.
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