Katy López, mother of 6-year-old Yoslany Herrera López, is urgently seeking help to obtain a humanitarian visa that would allow her child to receive treatment for cystic fibrosis. "In Cuba, it is a deadly disease."
According to the mother, in statements to CiberCuba, the child was diagnosed with this genetic disease, which primarily affects the lungs, at the age of two. Since then, he has been hospitalized 69 times.
In addition to cystic fibrosis, there is also the issue of severe malnutrition, and during the most recent hospital stay, the doctors spoke openly with the family, stating that Yoslany López has one lung that is "very sick." In short, they did not give any hope for recovery.
"That’s why I am pleading for a humanitarian visa," said the mother, Katy López, whose only hope for her son’s survival is that he can receive advanced therapies outside of Cuba, such as the one approved in the United States in 2019, based on Trikafta, to treat patients over 12 years old with the most common mutation of cystic fibrosis.
"In other countries, this disease is chronic; patients with treatment can live, but in this country, it is fatal, they have no option. You (the audience of CiberCuba) are my only tool for my child to live," the mother emphasized.
The child, he added, suffers from a "very complicated" illness that requires "many things," referring to medications such as antibiotics, vitamins, nebulizers, and phytotherapy that "are impossible to provide in Cuba. That’s a dream in Cuba," he insisted.
The mother, deeply distraught, stated that she wants her son to live. "I want to feel him, and if this opportunity exists, I want to exhaust all means to ensure my son has a better quality of life, which he cannot have here (in Cienfuegos)," she concluded.
Katy López's despair is akin to that of fellow Cuban Arlety Llerena Martínez, mother of Jorgito Reina, a 7-year-old boy with cancer who urgently needs a bone marrow transplant to survive, a procedure that hasn't been performed in Cuba for quite some time, as the medical team explained to the family.
Jorgito Reina has been waiting for almost a year for a humanitarian visa. Senator Marco Rubio himself intervened in the case to expedite the review by USCIS, but his intervention caused discomfort in Havana, and the process remained on hold.
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