Heartbreaking message from a Cuban in Holguín: "I, an AIDS patient, live in the streets"

A Cuban resident in Holguín published the heartbreaking message of an elderly woman who is an HIV/AIDS patient and currently lives on the streets, without security or means for a dignified life.

The Internet user, identified as Ghabriel Pérez, says that he woke up complaining because the plate in his house was leaking due to the excessive rains of recent days, but when he passed by the Vladimir Ilich Lenin Provincial Hospital he found an elderly person with the following plea : "I, an AIDS patient, live on the streets. And I do this to eat."

According to the published image, the woman apparently makes cloth bags to sell.

The author of the publication states that upon seeing that message he thought that in the course of the day a thousand [medical] students will pass in front of the woman who in their cloisters listen to a discourse different from that reality every day.

This week the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights denounced the situation of several children andold people on the island, who survive by begging and eat once a day.

As a result of the so-called Ordering Task, which triggered theprices of all items and services in the country, food shortages and inflation have plunged thousands of people into extreme poverty.

Beggars, mentally ill or disabled people, or people without families or homes, swarm alone – or sometimes accompanied by a pet – lying on old cardboard in streets, parks, doorways and bus stops throughout the country.

In recent months, Cubans have shown their discomfort with this phenomenon and have noted its seriousness on the island, where the Government always presumed that there were no people begging for alms in the streets.

Some claim that the population haslost empathy, and others try to practice it even without resources. "I saw that lady one day on the Boulevard with that same sign. I honestly thought they were being cared for by Social Assistance or something like that, but hey, how are they going to help anyone? If the entire country is living in misery, with the exceptions that we all know. What a disaster!" commented one Internet user on Pérez's post.

Cuba is currently the poorest country in Latin America, according to the firm DatoWorld, a renowned international electoral observatory that evaluates parameters such as per capita income, access to health services, social security, food and housing spaces. .

The country has a 72 percent poverty rate, a figure that places it at the forefront of the Latin American region.