Yarianna Arce Salomón, a specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine and General Surgery, reported on social media the collapse of the healthcare system in Cuba and the alarming lack of essential medical supplies to treat renal patients.
On Facebook, Arce exposed the harsh reality that her husband faces, a 38-year-old man who suffers from kidney failure and relies on peritoneal dialysis to survive, a treatment that, despite being considered a priority, has become unsustainable due to a shortage of resources.
Although the Cuban galena thanked the efforts of the medical team at the National Institute of Nephrology, and its leader, Dr. Yanet, noted that this is in vain if the Ministry of Public Health does not guarantee the necessary supplies to maintain the treatment.
"Now, in addition to being sick and in the terminal phase, one also has to suffer from the fact that there is not even the slightest resource to maintain stable treatment," he lamented.
According to the complainant, the situation has reached a critical point: there are no peritoneal dialysis bags to deliver to patients.
The alternative presented to them is desperate: to undergo hemodialysis, a treatment equally affected by the lack of resources, or to face death. “Why do we have to suffer so much to stay here in Cuba? Why are we left helpless in this way with such a simple resource as this?” she asked indignantly.
Arce reported that for more than four years, kidney transplants have not been performed in the country due to the same shortage of resources.
A nation that boasts of "advanced medicine" and a high scientific level finds it inconceivable that a basic resource like dextrose cannot be guaranteed for a small group of patients who depend on it to survive.
"There are around 80 patients under this treatment in a whole country, and the resource cannot even be guaranteed for them," he pointed out.
The doctor harshly criticized the ineffectiveness of the Cuban health system, pointing out that it seems more focused on political speeches and empty promises than on solving the real problems affecting the lives of citizens.
"We continue to waste time in meetings, diluted in politics, talking about how much they want to do, but they do nothing, and our loved ones continue to suffer, and we keep losing them, due to the lack of management and the ineptitude of people who do not care about the situation," he denounced angrily.
Arce expressed her deep disappointment with the sector to which she has dedicated her life: “I am ashamed to belong to this medical guild, I regret having studied so much for nothing, I feel betrayed by the very sector I belong to and perhaps it would have been better not to have been part of it at all,” she concluded, reflecting the feelings of many healthcare professionals who face the harsh reality of a collapsing system on a daily basis.
Finally, she said that her husband “is still waiting for his transplant that never comes, I don’t know how we got to this point, but I do know that I cannot remain silent in the face of so much insensitivity and injustice.”
In the midst of this context of extreme scarcity in healthcare institutions, and while the regime in Havana continues to send specialists on missions to other nations, Cubans continue to expose cases of medical negligence on social media.
Evidence of this situation was the recent death of Cuban doctor Roberto Edelso Ramírez in the province of Cienfuegos, due to the lack of medical supplies for patients in coronary care.
The son of the physician, Edgar Ramírez Turiño, reported on Facebook that the lack of essential medical supplies and equipment, as well as the apparent lack of response from the staff, led to the fatal outcome at the Gustavo Aldereguía Lima Hospital and called for a response from the authorities.
In early August, a young Cuban mother residing in Holguín reported that her son, just 20 days old, died as a result of medical negligence in a hospital in that province.
Arlety González, from the Negrito neighborhood in the Holguin municipality of Antilla, told the independent media CubaNet that it all started on January 24, when her baby fell ill and after a fatal outcome, they told her to "get used to the idea that he didn’t exist. That he had never existed."
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