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Relatives of Miguel Santana, a 70-year-old man who passed away this Saturday in Camagüey due to various health complications, reported that his body has been in the morgue of Amalia Simoni Hospital since 5:00 AM, due to delays in funeral services in the city.
According to relatives who spoke to journalist José Luis Tan Estrada, when they went to the medical center to demand that the body be prepared and transported, the shift supervisor at the hospital informed them that there is only one hearse available in the entire city to handle all the services, which caused a chain of delays in the collection and handling of the bodies.
The case of Miguel Santana highlights once again the collapse of the funeral system in Camagüey, where the shortage of hearses, delays in preparing bodies, and scarcity of basic resources have become recurring issues.
"His body remains in the morgue of the Amalia Simoni hospital in Camagüey, unprepared and beginning to emit a foul odor, as reported by his relatives," stated Tan Estrada.
Families, in addition to facing the pain of loss, must endure the uncertainty and an endless wait to be able to mourn and bury their loved ones with a minimum of dignity.
The complainants indicate that these shortages result in deeply painful scenes: corpses left for hours without being prepared or moved, strong odors in the morgues, and relatives who are forced to insist time and again to hospital and funeral authorities to expedite processes that, under normal conditions, should be quick and respectful.
The situation described in Camagüey is part of a broader context of a crisis in funeral services in the country.
As a reference, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, relatives of patients recently reported the complete collapse of funeral and hospital services at the Saturnino Lora Provincial Hospital, where at least 13 people have died and their bodies remained unburied due to the lack of management and response from the authorities.
This situation in Santiago was made public on Facebook by independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada, who asserted that the issue has been ongoing since before Hurricane Melissa passed through and that, even after the weather event, the bodies remained unhandled and were not returned to their families, creating scenes of desperation and profound sorrow in the hospital corridors.
"Since before the hurricane until today, at least 13 people have died in the Provincial Hospital. There are no answers, no organization, no respect for human suffering," the reporter reported.
In the case of Camagüey, Miguel Santana's family emphasizes that this is not an isolated incident, but rather a structural problem: the chronic lack of funeral transportation and resources for the handling of corpses.
For them, the combination of resource scarcity, disorganization, and lack of effective response from the authorities has turned the mourning period into an even more traumatic experience, marking what should be a respectful final farewell with indignity and neglect.
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