"The patients are pigs": Cuban hospital's response to a mother's criticism about the lack of hygiene

A Cuban mother denounced on her social media the terrible conditions at the Vladimir Ilich Lenin University Hospital in Holguín, a reality that is already common in many healthcare centers in the country.

However, the unusual aspect of this case is the institution's response to the complaint, blaming the patients for the disaster.

Yaide Gómez, a mother of two children, shared photos on her Facebook profile showing the dirtiness that prevails in the bathrooms of the surgical postpartum room (cesarean section) at the hospital.

"I made the decision for my children to be born here, in this abandoned disaster, like this sad country. And this hospital is the only option we have," she emphasized.

Yaide reports that when looking for a solution to sanitize the bathroom - the only one in the room and through which water ran down the hallway - the administration's response was that "the patients are pigs" and that there is no cleaning assistant.

Besides having to endure this disgusting situation, we also have to endure insults from the staff who are supposed to provide us with a health service," he said.

"My first child was born here in this hospital under the same conditions. It's not just a problem of understaffing, it's the normalization we have of the inhumane as everyday. Although I am truly surprised that there are still people (doctors, nurses, staff) working in that place without proper conditions and with such a miserable salary," she concluded.

On Sunday, the hospital shared a post on its Facebook profile to try to change the image of the patient.

In the photos, a group of workers can be seen cleaning various areas of the center, with a text in which they are described as "heroic" and as being "forged from the strongest steel", without making reference to Yaide's complaint and to an employee's response that "the patients are filthy pigs".

Many are our enemies, perhaps the most fierce: the lack of many essential supplies for life, the absence of significant and vital personnel such as our general assistants, our stretcher-bearers, porters... It describes the post, before adding that "it seems that some adversities could overcome us, sometimes favored by the indifference of some."